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Article

28 Feb 2008

Author:
Fred Pearce, Independent [UK]

The story of the blues: Tracking the journey of the £9 pair of jeans [Bangladesh]

I had travelled to Dhaka to find where the jeans I was wearing came from...I anticipated finding the unacceptable face of Bangladesh's garments industry, and discovering where sweatshop labour was even cheaper than in India. I was right on both counts. But I also discovered a strange flowering of female emancipation…"Officially, we get one day off a week, but if there is extra work we have to carry on working," Akhi said. In Bangladesh, there is a legal maximum of 50 hours a month overtime, and employers are not allowed to require women to work after 8pm. But sometimes, she said, they work all night and could clock up a 120-hour week...One top manager at a garment company told me: "These big-brand companies have corporate social responsibility departments, but the people who make the orders don't talk to them. We see it here all the time. The CSR people come in and stipulate basic standards. Then the next day the buyers come in and drive down prices and bring forward deadlines."...And the "race to the bottom" in the mass marketing of cheap clothes is intensifying...[also refers to H&M, Harvest Rich, Sunman Sweaters, Glory Garments, Niagara Textiles, Wal-Mart, Gap, M&S, Sears, Asda (part of Wal-Mart), Gucci (part of Pinault-Printemps-Redoute), Blue Horizon, Spencer's Apparel (part of Medlar Group), Nassa Group].