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The index documents violations of internationally recognised collective labour rights by governments and employers. For several years now, this "Global Rights Index" has also included a list of the ten "worst countries for working people". The number of countries where workers face threats and violence has once again increased significantly within one year. From 2016 to 2017, the number of these countries had already increased by ten percent. From 2017 to 2018, it rose again from 59 countries to 65 countries, i.e. again by more than 10 percent within one year. The 2018 Global Rights Index shows restrictions on freedom of speech and protests, as well as increasingly violent attacks on those advocating workers' rights. Decent work and democratic rights were undermined in almost all countries, while inequality continued to grow.

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The study reveals that in the average supply chain of Australian garment retailers, just 4% of the price of a piece of clothing is estimated to make it back to the pockets of workers. In countries like Bangladesh, where wages are extremely low, the situation is even direr. An average of just 2% of the price we pay in Australia goes towards factory wages. But Oxfam argues that paying living wages — wages that allow the women who make our clothes to live a decent life — is possible.

Women aged 18-25 make up 80% of the factory workers in the global garment industry. Their long hours of hard work have contributed to create booming economies and large export industries for countries like Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam and China. But this booming economic growth has not benefited everyone. While revenues continue to grow for many big Australian companies like Cotton On and Kmart, and while factory owners and suppliers to the garment industry across Asia continue to collect profits, the same cannot be said for garment workers.

It does not have to be this way. It's time for this unfair system to change. Brands need to pay living wages to the women who make our clothes — wages that will allow these women to lift themselves out of a life of poverty. Brands have the power — and the responsibility — to make this change.

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The textile industry in Surat, West India, has been shaken for years by violent factory accidents. A particularly serious accident with many deaths led to stricter regulations for building safety. However, since then, the living and working conditions of workers in Surat’s textile factory, the ‘silk city’ of India, have also improved and SOUTHWIND, together with its Indian partner, the Indian non-governmental organisation Peoples Training and Research Centre (PTRC), is investigating this question in this study. The study is based on a qualitative survey of 50 employees from 48 textile companies in Surat. Most of the respondents' employment relationships are informal, unprotected and poorly paid. Their wages are far from sufficient for a decent life. A variety of measures are needed to improve working conditions, and the study concludes with recommendations. The recommendations are addressed both to the Indian state, which needs to improve legal protection for employees, even in small businesses. However, they are also aimed at the German Textile Alliance, which aims to improve working conditions along the entire textile chain.

Editorial team: Jannik Krone and Vera Schumacher

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climate change, resource scarcity and economic crises on the one hand,
Growth paradigm, mass consumption and disposable mentality on the other – always
more people overcome these contradictions in niches and are committed to
Keeping things longer in usage cycles: Sharing, swapping and repairing
and rescues are interpreted as ways to live more sustainably and thus to
Contribute to social transformation. Based on the key players in
three exemplary fields – dress swapping parties, repair cafes and garbage diving –
In a comparative ethnography, Maria Grewe examines the cultural
Strategies in dealing with abundance and scarcity and examines the contribution
cultural anthropological research for the discourse on sustainability.

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Today, the organisation of the global apparel sector is characterized by global production networks (GPNs) that link actors at the different steps of the value chain from production to consumption. GPNs in the apparel sector are usually set up and controlled by large transnational retailers connecting their suppliers with their headquarters and stores. Sincere tailors seek to increase their profits by reducing labour costs, labour intensive production activities are sourced out to independent subcontractor firms located authorised in countries in the Global South where wages are low and labour organizations weak. After the introduction of the Multifibre Arrangement in 1974, big European and US corporations, such as Walmart, H&M and Nike established large and geographically dispersed networks of suppliers of ready-made garments (RMG), with Asia being the biggest sourcing hub. Although the emergence of an export garment industry has played an important role in steering economic development in Asian countries, it has been achieved at the expense of the millions of workers in the supplier factories. Governments aim to promote the international competitiveness of their ready-made garment export sectors and to attract buyers from the Global North by maintaining low wages and implementing labour laws that allow for greater workforce flexibility. Thus, child labour, extremely low wages, excessive health and safety provisions, excessive overtime and high levels of pressure at work characterize the reality in workplaces in the RMG export industry in many Asian countries.

As a response, over the last few decades, garment workers in Asia have developed strategies of resistance to fight against exploitative practices and policies by employers and government institutions at the international, national and subnational level. In most garment-exporting countries, especially in South and South-East Asia, the labour movement is weak and fragmented, with trade union dominated by political parties. But the expansion of the garment export sector has also brought about the development of several labour unions in this industry, which, rather than seeking institutional power through proximity to a political party, aims to build associational power through a social movement approach.

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