United Nations Guiding Principles on Business & Human Rights - An Introduction The video gives a brief overview of the UN Guidelines on Business and Human Rights. It explains the enshrined responsibility of governments and companies to protect and respect human rights and the possibilities of liability and compensation for human rights violations. Mehr Details
Fast fingers. Child labour in Indian cotton seed fields Child labour can be hidden in any garment or towel made of Indian cotton, because India is one of the most important cotton producers and exporters worldwide. Anyone who wants to offer (or consume) textiles and clothing without child labour must therefore also investigate the conditions under which the seed was produced, from which the cotton fiber was later extracted and processed. SOUTHWIND and its Indian partner CLRA (PRAYAS) conducted a survey in Gujarat at the end of 2017 to assess the current level of child labour. Three separate questionnaires were drawn up for surveys on the farms, the workers and the households in the villages. The concrete results of the investigation: Level of education: About a third of children and adolescents have never attended school. Working and living conditions on the farm: All children reported working at least eight hours a day, the vast majority even worked ten hours a day on a regular basis. Qualitative interviews with child workers show that physical assaults in the workplace are particularly common in children. Mehr Details
Garment Supply Chains since Rana Plaza - Governance & Worker Outcomes The April 2013 Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh, which killed over 1,000 garment workers and injured many more, shocked the world. Since then, lead firms, supplier factories, governments and multiple other stakeholders have sought to improve building safety in Bangladesh and to strengthen the governance of labour standards in garment supply chains. This report summarizes the results of the Garment Supply Chain Governance Project, which provides the most thorough analysis of lead firms’ current practices and their impact on garment factories and workers in the context of various public and private labour governance initiatives to date. Since the Rana Plaza disaster, buyer-supplier relations, lead firm labour governance approaches and worker outcomes in Bangladeshi garment factories have changed. These changes can be attributed to an intensified climate for compliance regarding important building safety, but also other aspects of working conditions. While it is difficult to tease out precisely the causal impact of each initiative implemented in Bangladesh since Rana Plaza, our data indicate that this climate of compliance and the resulting changes can be strongly associated to lead firms’ engagement in the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety (Accord). Mehr Details
Consequences of Free Trade - The End of the World Textile Agreement and the Impact on Workers In times of uncertain global economic conditions and increasing social conflicts, hardly any topic is as controversial as free trade. In autumn 2015, 250,000 people took to the streets in Berlin alone against the planned free trade agreements TTIP and CETA. For a serious discussion about the consequences of free trade, it makes sense to take a look at the global market for textiles and clothing, which has been largely liberalised since 2005.The authors, Dr. Sabine Ferenschild and Julia Schniewind, can prove that many predictions made in previous studies from 2004 and 2009 have now become reality. In particular, there has been an increase in competition between production sites, further relocations to Asia and, in some cases, even a deterioration in working conditions. Large brand companies in particular are benefiting from the expansion of world trade in textiles and clothing. The study shows that free trade in textiles and clothing is not equally beneficial for all parties involved and that further national and international measures are necessary to ensure effective protection of workers: "Instead of discussing trade barriers and their elimination in global trade as before, the discussion must be directed towards intellectual property rights for employees and their implementation", concludes the authors. Editorial team: Altgeld, Christopher (Otto Brenner Foundation) Mehr Details
The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion Fashion is fun. Fashion gives power. Fashion is the favorite child of capitalism. Fashion is as great and exciting as the system behind it is dirty and destructive. British journalist Tansy Hoskins illuminates the business of fashion in its dark corners. From Haute Couture to H&M, from Karl Marx to Karl Lagerfeld, she talks about the emergence of the phenomenon of mass fashion, about the body and capitalism, advertising and resistance. Refreshing and never instructive, Tansy Hoskins criticizes what fashion does to us consumers: Young people queuing up in front of the Nike shops overnight to grab the latest pair of sneakers. Women who are starving for "size zero". Is fashion racist, or why is it still a "white" business? And what to do about the black hole of wanting that never disappears, no matter how much you go shopping? Step by step, this book unravels the threads from which the business is knitted, and it points out ways in a different direction, for fair production, environmental protection or the emancipation of dangerous ideals of beauty. Tansy Hoskins wants to revolutionize fashion just because she loves fashion! Mehr Details
