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Worker Rights Consortium White Paper. Who Will Bail Out the Workers that Make our Clothes?

The economic repercussions of the coronavirus pandemic are colossal in scale and global in scope. The world’s wealthy countries are poised to spend trillions of dollars to shore up the income of their workers and to rescue their corporations. A vital question remains unanswered: who is going to rescue the workers who toil in the global supply chains of many of those corporations? These workers, like ones who make the clothes and shoes we wear, are among the hardest hit by the economic catastrophe of Covid-19.

The number of people who will be affected — as supply chain workers are terminated, en masse, with little or no compensation — is enormous. There are more than 150 million workers in lower-income countries producing goods for export to North America, Europe, and Japan and tens of millions more in service jobs linked to global corporations in wealthier countries.

In apparel, textile, and footwear — a sector where workers will fare especially poorly — there are 50 million workers, many of them women who are their families’ primary wage earner. Very few of these workers have ever been paid enough to accumulate any savings. In fact, chronically low wages have left many in debt. This paper focuses on the apparel sector, as it will be among the most severely affected by the Covid-19 crisis; however, to a substantial extent, the points made herein apply across sectors.

Herausgeber*in/Autor*in: Worker Rights Consortium, Washington, D.C.; Autor*in: Nova, Scott; Zeldenrust, Inekel

Medienart: Hintergrundinformation

Erscheinungsjahr: 2020

Zielgruppe: Student*innen, Erwachsene

Sprache: Englisch

Umfang: 7 Seiten
Bezug: kostenfrei zum Download als PDF-Datei

Suchbegriffe: Arbeitsbedingungen, globale Produktionsströme, Lieferkette, Lohn, Produktionsländer, Unternehmensverantwortung, Wirtschaftskrise