Who Dressed You?

"Ma, I’m on the third floor. Help me." Then the voice went dead. 
- A girl calling her mother after the clothing factory building collapsed in Dhaka.

The fashion parade at the Punchestown races this week and the latest horrific deaths of hundreds of men and women in a clothes factory in Bangladesh exhibited two aspects of the clothing industry that are seldom connected. The interviewer at the races feeds the curiosity of the viewing public by asking where the interviewee got his or her outfit. The interviewee’s answer goes no further than a local boutique or a clothing chain. They seldom make the connection between the outlet where they purchased the item and those whose hard labour in sweat-shop conditions manufactured it. The probability is that the outfit will be worn just for that day and then disposed of to a clothing bank.

In a bubblegum culture not only is the item of clothing disposable but the person that fashioned it is too. This is obvious from the conditions they slave in and the accidents that occur either in fires or in the collapse of buildings similar to the one in Dhaka this week.

The clothing business has over time migrated to the cheapest manufacturing destination to feed the western market system with cheap garments. Of course this practice is not new. The African Slave Trade perpetrated by European powers put in place a mercantile exploitative paradigm that has been copied right up to the present. The African Slave Trade supplied the European consumer market with cheap goods and essentially financed the industrial revolution. It was terminated after more than a century of campaigning that took on and exposed the slave system of plantation owners and their protectors in European governments. It is well to remember that at the abolition of slavery European governments indemnified the slave owners. The slaves, wealth creators, were turned out on the road and left to fend for themselves. 

After the Second World War European governments at the request of business imported workers from their former colonies again as cheap labour to fill the demographic deficit in European populations as a result of war. As in slave times, European governments and manufacturing companies in a mercantile mind-set forgot that workers were people, human beings like themselves with similar aspirations. These workers, immigrants, people, organised themselves and as in the past had to struggle for their rights and dignity.

However, as they demanded and eventually got parity of wages and rights with the indigenous population, manufacturing companies began to look elsewhere for cheaper labour. Simultaneously, indigenous European populations became anti-immigrant. Listening to political voices at general and local elections that used immigrants as scapegoats, new immigration legislation rendered the importation of cheap labour prohibitive. But, manufacturing companies with their newly acquired lobbying outreach in centres of power around the world persuaded governments and international agencies to facilitate their interests in the form of free trade agreements and the easy movement of capital in a system of modern globalisation. Its architects in their race for riches created their own reality, a reality that excluded people. After centuries of struggle, people, human beings, wealth creators became slaves again.

In that light manufacturing chased cheap, unprotected labour. Government departments in developing nations like Bangladesh sought out manufacturing companies offering all kinds of sweetheart deals that would give employment; in doing so, these governments sold their people short. Transnational companies, as in colonial times, became the extension of western governments – most of whom turned a blind eye as long as cheap commodities kept flowing in, some profits were repatriated and market share maintained.

Over time, however, consumers throughout the world have become disgusted on hearing about the treatment of those who make the clothes they wear. This disgust is heightened on seeing the horrific pictures of poor women, girls and men being pulled out of collapsing buildings in which their clothes are sewed. They are equally horrified by news and pictures of industrial accidents that leave people dead and their environment poisoned like what happened in Dhaka this week.

So, what do you do? Check the brands you have on your back and in your clothes closet. Are they brands from those stores whose clothes are manufactured in these sweatshops? If they are, do you feel any connection with the woman trapped in that clothing factory calling for her mother to come and release her?

We are indignant about the women who were exploited in this country in Magdalene laundries. Should we not be equally angry about the way women are treated in Bangladesh that sew our clothes?

What should we do?

• Check the brands we wear.
• Where are they manufactured?
• Are there outlets for these brands in Ireland?
• What stores near you sell these brands?
• Network with others who are campaigning for change.
• Check out the Clean Clothes Campaign Ireland.
• Lobby your elected officials and European Members of Parliament. 

We didn’t want to go in but the supervisors threatened to dock pay if we didn’t return to work. 

– The words of a worker who was ordered to leave the factory building the day before because of cracks on walls.