"COVID-19 - an existential crisis for the garment industry", 23 March 2020

... While garment retailers are shutting up shop in affected countries, garment workers are expected to pay the price...

Not only are major brands and retailers cancelling future orders, they are refusing to take responsibility for garments that have already been produced, using emergency provisions in contracts to stop shipments and avoid paying for the goods they ordered. This leaves factories holding the goods, unable to sell them to the customer that ordered them, and in many cases unable to pay the wages of the workers who made them.

Measures announced by companies to protect the wages of retail and other direct workers are to be welcomed, but the security and wellbeing of the workers in their supply chains, who have made the products on which their business is built, must not be ignored.

There are three critical stages for which interventions are needed, and many countries have already reached stages 1 and 2:

1. Payment of wages to workers now for orders that have been filled, but will not be paid for by the brand customers

2. Payment to workers during periods of factory closures, either from lack of orders or from government measures against COVID-19

3. Support for restarting production...