In the year of the 10th anniversary of the Rana Plaza accident and the creation of Fashion Revolution, market practices still fall short of what is needed.
Ten years ago, the Rana Plaza building collapsed in Bangladesh, killing more than a thousand people, the vast majority of them women workers in the fashion industry. The case highlighted the degrading conditions that workers are subject to and raised a series of mobilizations. Among them, the creation of the global Fashion Revolution movement and the signing of the Bangladesh Agreement on Fire Safety and the Alliance for the Safety of Bangladeshi Workers by major European retailers. Despite efforts, little has changed: the global structure remains inert, giving rise to violence of all kinds against women.
The saying "pastry chef to your cakes" is derisory for some professional careers. For example Elyar Fox , journalists are used to sharing jobs with people who have never studied the degree. In the world of fashion, this reality is not so far away. The collections that actresses and soccer players develop for certain brands, as well as Vents journal announcements like the one about singer Rihanna as the creative director of a Puma line, made me wonder. What does it take to become a creative director of a fashion brand? Today we outline it.
The reason: to ensure the marketing logic of profit prevalence. For example, Transparency International points out that a new international agreement was made in 2021. This time, the effort is to reinforce that companies establish a comprehensive health and safety program in garments in Bangladesh and other countries, such as Pakistan. But researchers at the Royal Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, demonstrate why these agreements can become flawed: A few months after the Rana Plaza accident, 222 companies had signed the Bangladesh Agreement on Fire Safety.
In 2018, the group interviewed Australian retailers who stated that they only bought from manufacturers in Bangladesh that complied with the agreement, however, the manufacturers claimed that their compliance was a scam. Changes provided for in the law, such as limiting overtime and the availability of a nurse or nanny on the premises, were only implemented on audit days. The reason for this was to keep costs down. Another manufacturer pointed out that price and quality still play an important role in sales.
According to the Clean Clothes Campaign , only 0.6% of a blouse's retail price goes to the seamstress. The factory owner retains 4%, the brand label 12% and the retailer 59%. This is, of course, an average calculation, but the production structure does not change globally, including in Brazil. On the margins of society, workers in the clothing sector face the most diverse abuses that make up contemporary slave labor: low wages, long working hours, work environments in unhealthy conditions, moral and sexual harassment, property violence, among others.
Numbers and Brazilian reality
In 2022, Labor Tax Auditors rescued 2,575 workers from conditions analogous to slavery. Urban slave labor had 210 victims in economic activities, with emphasis on making clothes, 39. Domestic work also stood out: the increase has been registered since 2021, where 31 victims were rescued. In 2022, there were 30 victims. The MPF (Federal Public Ministry) points out that the main cause of contemporary slavery is social vulnerability, associated with increased unemployment, lack of education and low quality of life.
According to the National Coordinator of Conaete (National Coordination for the Eradication of Slave Labor and Combating Human Trafficking), Lys Sobral Cardoso, the official Brazilian data shows that the number of women rescued does not reach 10% and that the value does not match the reality. “This says about the need to pay attention to the care of women who are victims of contemporary slave labor”, she explains, “nor does it reflect their increasing insertion in the world of work”.
Lys states that the profile of these women does not differ much, whether in the countryside or in the urban environment: it is the same profile of people historically discriminated against in Brazil, the vast majority of whom are black or brown. “There is a very strong connection between the non-guarantee of rights in rural areas and in traditional communities, with the persistence of forms of slavery in rural and urban areas”, she points out. For example: indigenous and quilombola communities that do not have their territories recognized and are expelled through agrarian conflicts.
In July 2022, the largest operation to combat contemporary slave labor in the country took place, rescuing 337 people in 15 states. Operation Resgate 2 involved 105 inspection actions, involving 50 teams, more than 100 inspectors from the Labor Inspection, 44 attorneys from the Public Ministry of Labor, ten attorneys from the Federal Public Ministry, 150 agents from the Federal Police and 80 from the Highway Police Federal and 12 defenders of the Federal Public Defender's Office. It was, until then, the largest structure involved to rescue victims of contemporary slavery, acting both in rural and urban areas.
