Femnet e.V.

Multi-Actor-Partnership for a gender-responsive occupational health and safety approach in the shoe and textile industry

Most workers in the shoe and textile industry are women. Therefore, they are impacted by the predominantly unhealthy working conditions in a particular manner. A person’s gender influences their individual risks and needs. Violence and discrimination, overtime and double burden of domestic care and paid work exposes women in particular to occupational accidents and diseases. Gender-responsive perspectives on occupational health and safety measures are still lacking.

Health is a recognized human right. However, most workers in the garment and footwear industry in India and Indonesia are far from being in an acceptable state of health. The predominantly female workers in the industry are exposed to particularly high health risks. This is all the more true in cases where they are affected by multiple discrimination as homeworkers or migrant workers.

The pressure of heavy workload and inadequate safety precautions often lead to injuries and mutilations as well as chronic and mental illness. Access to clean water and adequate sanitation is absent at many production sites — or is restricted by supervisors. Menstruation, pregnancy, and motherhood are frequent occasions for discrimination. For fear of wage cuts or dismissals, health issues by women workers are often concealed.

The Corona crisis has further aggravated the situation of women workers. Due to price pressure and flexible contracts, suppliers decided to cut costs by lowering labour and health standards — at the expense of women workers. To guarantee an adequate and gender-responsive health protection, action is needed on many levels.

Our Goals

All people have a right to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health at work. By means of a multi-actor-partnership, we aim to contribute to the implementation of adequate occupational health and safety measures for workers in the garment and footwear sector in India and Indonesia. In doing so, gender-specific needs must be put in a prominent position and power asymmetries between the actors must be balanced out. This is what we want to achieve:

1. Gender-specific health risks of workers are socially recognised as an issue; educational and campaigning work increases pressure to act.
2. Companies, workers, local trade unions, existing multi-stakeholder-initiatives, supplying companies and civil society organisations enter dialogue on equal terms and act in common.
3. In dialogue with all stakeholders, standards are developed and implemented in pilot factories to achieve concrete improvements in the health situation of women workers.

Our activities and measures

Inform, Educate, Act

Through dialogue forums and lecture series on health and gender, we address the specific concerns and questions of the parties involved. Together with our partners Cividep (India), TURC (Indonesia) and SÜWIND Institute (Germany) we promote the dissemination of information and point to options for action.

Setting Gender-Responsive Standards

In the context of the multi-actor-partnership, together with all relevant stakeholders, we are developing guidelines for gender-responsive occupational health and safety protection at the factory level. They are grounded in empirical data collection and studies on site, which focus on the female workers as main protagonists.

Photos:

Rollup: © Südwind
Workshop: © CIVIDEP

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Category: What we do

We are stronger together than we are on our own. That is why we unite our strengths with many other organisations in Germany and internationally in the fight for better working conditions in the garment industry.

Our contribution

FEMNET is significantly involved in the carrier circle of the Clean Clothes Campaign Germany. We support various CCC campaigns such as the activities for the extension of the agreement ‘Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh’ or the #GoTransparent-campaign. We contribute to public relations work and public statements but also participate in street actions. FEMNET’s open join-in-meeting "FairQuatschen" serves as Bonn’s regional group of the CCC. On an international level, we actively participate in various CCC working groups. For engaging in networking and campaign planning, we participate in national and international meetings of the CCC .

Our goals

The aim of the CCC is to create humane working conditions in the global clothing, sports- and footwear industry.

That is what we want to achieve:

1. Companies respect basic human and labour rights throughout the supply chain; states create legal regulations that oblige companies to respect human rights; employees have direct access to complaint mechanisms that investigate, punish and provide compensations for violations. These guiding principles were adopted by the UN Human Rights Council in 2011.
2. The struggles of workers - especially women - in the production countries who are facing violations of labour rights are supported in solidarity, especially through campaigns directed at German purchasing companies.
3. The German public is informed and supports our campaigns.

Decent work is based on the conventions of the United Nations’ International Labour Organisation (ILO/ILO). They demand freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, a minimum age for workers, living wages, safety and health at work, regulation of working hours, and the prohibition of forced labour and discrimination. Trade union rights are particularly important as they pursue humane working conditions and provide ground for workers to stand up for labour rights themselves

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Category: What we do

The Partnership for Sustainable Textiles is a multi-stakeholder initiative with currently 122 members (May 2019) from five stakeholder groups. Industry, the German Federal Government, civil society, trade unions and the so-called standard organisations are working together to improve working conditions in global textile production - from the production of raw materials to the disposal of textiles.

The Textiles Partnership was founded in October 2014 by German Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development, Dr. Gerd Müller, in response to fatal accidents in textile factories in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

FEMNET as a non-governmental organisation (NGO) has been a member of the Textiles Partnership from the very beginning and represents the civil society - 18 NGOs - in its highest body, the steering group, together with colleagues from two other organisations. In addition to this, we work intensively in expert groups on topics such as the review process, complaint system’ and transparency to ensure that measures planned within the framework of the Textiles Partnership are implemented and show results.

Is our cooperation in the Textiles Partnership worthwhile? A critical assessment.

On an on-going basis, we (also in the circle of the Clean Clothes Campaign) critically assess our intensive cooperation in the Textiles Partnership. The efforts are high and the progress seems to be slow. This is what has been achieved so far:

• The members must publish an annual plan based on specified objectives (roadmaps) and report on its implementation. The binding time and quantity targets are not far-reaching enough in our view, but they are at least a first step.
• The payment of living wages is considered an important goal by all.
• The Tamil Nadu Alliance Initiative was launched.

On the other hand, there are also points of criticism, such as the refusal of some companies to publish a list of their suppliers. Too few companies are willing to participate in an alliance initiative in a country on the issue of living wages in order to pay higher wages as an exemplary manner. We reserve the right to end our involvement as soon as we realise that the Textiles Partnership is not developing the credibility and effectiveness we expect in the medium to long term. At the moment, we still see benefits and continue our cooperation.

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Category: What we do

Tamil Nadu is one of the hotspots of the Indian textile industry. In the state's approximately 2,000 spinning mills, 80 percent young women and girls work. Nationwide, they produce the largest amount of yarns and fibers. Their working lives are marked by exploitation through blanket contracts, wages below the official minimum wage, excessive overtime, trade union repression, lack of freedom of association and gender-based violence. In most cases, it is not a lack of corresponding laws and regulations, but of compliance with and enforcement.

1st project phase: Raising awareness

One of the most serious labour and human rights violations, especially in Tamil Nadu, is the Sumangali or Camp Labour system, under which very young girls between the ages of 14 and 18 in particular have to do forced labour. With the Tamil Nadu alliance initiative, we fight against this and every other form of exploitation in the southern Indian state. The initiative, which we launched as part of the Textiles Partnership with our partner organisation SAVE, aims to achieve a comprehensive, systemic improvement of working conditions in the entire textile and clothing industry in Tamil Nadu. During the 1st project phase from July 2018 to June 2020, our SAVE partners are working on site to implement this goal.

Successes

In around 200 spinning mills, a total of 24,500 workers and 2,000 factory managers have been trained on labour and human rights standards and more than 240 grievance committees have been set up. In addition, regular exchange at district and federal level between stakeholders from government, business, trade unions and civil society helped to create more trust and transparency and to formulate joint action plans.

The 2nd phase of the project set new priorities

In November 2021, the second project phase of the Tamil Nadu Partnership Initiative started, which ended in March 2023.  In this phase, ten pilot factories per district were selected in order to be able to expand the training in terms of scope and quality. Independent people are also new for monitoring. They are supposed to accompany and check the progress and functionality of the factory's internal grievance committees and exchange ideas with the workers outside the factories.

Through the respective district coordinators of SAVE, a direct exchange between the modules "Dialogue" and "Training" is created. The district committees continue to be staffed with representatives from the government, companies and associations, as well as NGOs and trade unions. They set themselves concrete milestones to address the structural problems in the spinning mills and factories and to improve working conditions in the long term.

BI Tamil Nadu beendet

The project ended as planned on 31.3.2023. Complaints committees (GRC) were successfully set up in 31 spinning mills and ICC, committees that deal specifically with women's discrimination, in 32 spinning mills. The high number of complaints received during the project period should be emphasized. A high number of complaints is a good sign because it shows that the workers have confidence to submit them. This happened during the trainings in the factories that SAVE has carried out. Around 2800 workers, the majority of them female, took part in the training courses in 40 spinning mills. More than 2500 complaints related to women-specific issues, of which around 39 percent could be resolved. Around 7900 complaints were collected, which revolved around wage payments, overtime, child labour, etc., of which only 643 could be satisfactorily clarified.

Overall, it should be noted that it is a special challenge to become active in spinning mills, as the participating brands usually have no direct relationship with the spinning mills. It was all the more surprising that SAVE was able to conduct training courses in the spinning mills. Nevertheless, these trainings do not fundamentally change the working situation in the factories, as the fluctuation of employees is high and new training is always necessary. Training alone does not lead to structural improvement. This requires the establishment of effective works councils with the support of trade unions. However, most owners of spinning mills and factories resist this.

Details

Category: What we do