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Article

7 Dec 2020

Author:
Meg Lewis, The Guardian

Commentary: With garment workers in Arcadia Group’s supply chain set to bear brunt of its collapse, civil society calls for stronger safeguards for workers

“Philip Green is the Scrooge who haunts million of garment workers”, 04 December 2020

… Arcadia’s collapse will send further shockwaves throughout the fashion industry…

Like many global clothing brands, the accumulation of huge wealth by those at the top of Arcadia over the past two decades has been facilitated by supply chains that exploit and maintain global inequality. Garment workers, predominantly women of colour, who stitch clothes for Arcadia brands have been reported to work up to 12 hours a day, six days a week, in some cases earning as little as £4 a day.

Arcadia sources production in countries such as India, Bangladesh and Cambodia to take advantage of low workers’ rights protections…

... The system is rigged against workers at the bottom of the supply chain. In times of crisis, the ones who can least afford it pay the biggest price.

Workers rights groups such as Labour Behind the Label are calling for drastic reforms to the industry, including the establishment of a Severance Guarantee Fund, which would ensure workers are paid severance and legally owed wages in the case of insolvency. Brands such as Arcadia have proven time and again that they cannot be trusted to protect the workers in their supply chains through voluntary codes of conduct. It is abundantly clear that we need binding legislation and supply chain regulation to hold brands to account for human rights in their supply chain.

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