Back to school
You can now buy a whole school uniform for less than
the price of a dvd. What the blazers is going on? asks Ruth Rosselson.
Price wars
Earlier this year, supermarket giant ASDA announced that it was selling
a school uniform for less than £10 – including shoes.(2) At such
low prices, it’s no wonder that consumers and journalists have started
asking questions. “I don’t understand how they’re able to
bring it down year after year,” says Mark Rogers from ethical school
uniform company Clean Slate.
ASDA pointed to its membership of the Ethical
Trading Initiative (ETI) to reassure that the school wear was ‘ethically
sourced’.2 Yet Sam Maher from Labour Behind the Label (LBL) and Paul
Collins from War on Want have expressed doubt that ETI membership was proof
that the garments were ‘clean’, explaining that research has repeatedly
found over work and under pay in factories used by ASDA and other ETI members.(3,4,
29) “We want more proof” said Collins.
“They might be making
ethical claims, but the reality is that we’ve seen no evidence.”(5)
If companies are really sourcing ethically, then they need to be a lot more
transparent about it, he argues. Collins believes that retailers need to
publish more details about the factories, including exactly how much workers
were being paid, rather than making vague statements about ethical trading.
ASDA isn’t the only one pushing prices down. Woolworth quickly followed
suit by announcing that it would sell trousers and skirts for £2,(1)
and other retailers also cut the prices of their school wear in a bid to
compete. Mark Rogers thinks that it’s likely that ASDA and some of
the other retailers are using uniforms as loss leaders – a much criticised
tactic used to get consumers into the shop.
The trouble with these kinds
of tactics is that when prices are cut other retailers will follow. So,
even if ASDA itself was absorbing the cost of the low prices, it’s
unlikely that all other retailers can and will.
More often than not, it’s
the suppliers that are taking the brunt of the cuts, says Dominic Eagleton
from Action Aid.(6) Factory managers in Bangladesh told Action Aid that
by the end of 2006, Tesco was paying 5-10% less for clothes manufactured
in Bangladesh than it was in 2003-4, even though minimum wages and living
costs had risen.(4) Action Aid found that this meant that workers were suffering
as they were “forced to absorb buyers’ demands for lower costs”.(4)
Labelling
When we did a shop survey for schoolwear, we looked to see where clothes
were being made.(7) Primark, Woolworths and Waitrose made this hard by not
including country of origin information on their schoolwear. Indeed, we
didn’t find any country of origin information on any of Primark or
Woolworth’s products. All those three have received a lower rating
from us for this lack of transparency, as we assume that, without labels
telling consumers otherwise, at least some of their products could have
been made in oppressive regimes such as China and Vietnam.
Bangladesh
When we looked at the other retailers, our survey found that most items
had been manufactured in Bangladesh, China, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.
Both China and Vietnam are on our list of oppressive regimes, giving companies
a negative rating for sourcing from there. Although Bangladesh isn’t
on our oppressive regimes list, the situation for workers there is pretty
dire, as it is in many other countries not on our oppressive regimes list.
According to LBL’s Sam Maher, there are two million factory workers
in the Bangladeshi textile sector, mainly producing low-cost clothes for
companies like ASDA, Tesco and Primark.
90% of these workers are women.
“Their earnings are so low that they can’t even afford to send
their own children to school, let alone buy them a uniform,” she says.8
What’s happening with cheap school uniforms, she continues, is that
parents on low wages in the UK are subsidised by low-waged workers overseas
producing their clothes, while in the middle of it, the companies are making
massive profits.(8)
Last year, workers in Bangladesh tried to press for
a national minimum wage of £25 a month – which, according to
Maher, wasn’t even in itself a ‘living wage’. The government
finally settled on a minimum wage of the equivalent of £13.27 a month
– just over half what workers were asking for.(9)
When War on Want did its research into factories in Bangladesh supplying
Tesco, Primark and ASDA last year, it found workers on less than 7p an hour
working in excess of 70 hour weeks.(3)
Paul Collins believes that since
then, very little has changed for those workers, despite rhetoric from the
companies that those clothes are being made under ethical conditions. “We
would know from workers if there was a significant change in conditions,”
agrees Maher.(8) “Unless companies can prove to us that workers are
working in decent conditions, then it’s unlikely that just because
they are ETI members workers are being treated fairly and being paid enough”.
Bangladesh relies on the garment export business, explains Collins, but
this means that our retailers wield enormous amounts of power, knowing that
factories will compete for poor business, rather than have no business at
all.(5) “The problems workers face in Bangladesh are not unique,”
points out Maher“it’s just that Bangladesh is the low-cost clothing
capital of the world. But it’s likely that these conditions are similar
in many other countries”.(8)
Codes of conduct ratings
We asked all the companies in this report to send us a supply chain policy
addressing workers’ rights at their overseas suppliers. No mainstream
company provided us with a policy that would receive a top rating. This
rating requires companies to ban forced labour and child labour under 15,
set a maximum working week of 48 hours with a maximum of 12 hours voluntary
overtime, independently monitor factories, ban discrimination in the workplace,
allow or facilitate union membership and pay workers a ‘living wage’.
ETI membership does not qualify for a top rating because we require companies
to name independent monitors and because the ETI’s base code falls
down on the issue of living wages. The ETI code, like many others, pledges
to pay workers “prevailing industry norms” or “legal minimums”.
Although these codes do also state that this should be a ‘living wage’
they do not quantify exactly what this means in practice, or how such a
wage is worked out. Most companies therefore just settle for paying industry
norms or legal minimums, neither of which add up to what workers actually
need to live on.
But, can companies afford to up those wages and still ‘compete on
the high street’? Dominic Eagleton believes that, yes, they can.(6)
In some cases, he points out, “labour costs are such a tiny percent
of the overall retail price [retailers] can afford to absorb the cost of
increasing wages”.(6)
“For some products, you could even double
the wages for workers and it wouldn’t mean much for the supermarkets,”
he says.(6) In other cases, just a small price rise of less than a pound
an item, if filtered back to the workers, would be a significant improvement.
Paul Collins meanwhile points to Tesco’s massive profits and the vast
amounts of money paid out to company directors. “Do they need £2.6
billion pound profits?” he questions. “Their chief executive stands
to gain £11 million if the planned Tesco expansion into America is
successful. Meanwhile, we’ve got poor rural women producing clothes
in the hope of earning enough money to send some home, and finding that
they hardly have enough money to feed themselves”.(5)
If companies
are really competitive, he argues, then they should take the lead and start
paying decent wages, and producing tangible evidence that they’re doing
so.(5)
What is a living wage?
A living wage is one which “enables workers to meet their needs for
nutritious food and clean water, shelter, clothes, education, health care
and transport, as well as allowing for discretionary income”.(10) Labour
Behind the Label (LBL) say that the living wage should be “enough to
provide for the basic needs of workers and their families.” A living
wage should mean that workers would not have to work excessive overtime
just to raise their income above subsistence level.
As it stands now, companies
claiming to pay ‘living wages’ still pay workers so little that
“they cannot adequately feed and educate their family”.(10) An
important step toward the negotiation of a decent, living wage, is union
membership, allowing workers to negotiate their own pay, rather than relying
on companies overseas to set the standards for them. “A living wage
is more than just an aspiration: it is a right” say Action Aid. “...workers
have a right to earn a living wage within a reasonable number of working
hours. Their children have rights too: to grow up in dignity, spend time
with their parents and go to school”.(4)
Purchasing practices
School uniforms offer companies an opportunity to really show that they
can source responsibly. Unlike fashion ranges, which are subject to fast
moving trends and seasonal changes, school uniforms are standard clothing
items. This means that some purchasing practices which lead to ethical principles
being compromised could be tackled. The time between order and delivery
could be longer, taking off the pressure for factories to push their workers
into working such long hours.
The way that companies use ‘reverse auctions’ to choose suppliers
could also be addressed. This is a tool used to drive down prices, as suppliers
are asked to put in public bids online undercutting each other until the
buyer receives the lowest price. Action Aid argue that prices in such negotiations
are not based on what is reasonable “but what other suppliers have
supposedly offered”.(4) Companies could instead establish long-term relationships
with suppliers and work to set prices that would enable them to offer a
reasonably priced item, without making compromises on ethics.
Cotton production
It’s not just in clothing manufacture that workers are exploited. An
Environmental Justice Foundation (EFJ) report “White Gold, the True
Cost of Cotton,” published earlier this year, found that child labour
was rife in the cotton industry. In India, it claimed that over 100,000
children worked 13 hours a day.(11) Environmental degradation is also a
big issue, as is pesticide use, which has a heavy toll on all workers in
the industry, especially children. Cotton is, argues EJF, “the dirtiest
agricultural commodity,” utilising “more insecticides than any
other crop in the world”.(11)
A study in India found that children
in cotton production areas performed badly “in tests to assess mental
ability, memory, concentration, cognitive skills, balance, and co-ordination.”(11)
Deaths as a direct result of pesticides are not uncommon. “In one season,
one area in Benin reported 37 deaths and another 36 cases of serious illnesses,
due to cotton pesticides.”(11) Chemicals used on cotton also pollute
drinking water causing further problems. Cotton is also a very thirsty crop,
requiring six pints of water for each single cotton bud. In Central Asia,
the water demand for the irrigation of cotton fields has contributed to
the draining of the Aral Sea, described by the United Nations as “one
of the most staggering disasters of the 20th Century”.(11)
The EJF is calling for better labelling of cotton products, as currently
only the country of manufacture (if that) is given. This means, says EJF
“that unless the product is labelled as organic or fairly traded, we
are left in the dark about the conditions of the cotton production.”(11)
Better labelling would allow consumers to make more informed choices. Fairtrade
cotton is one positive choice that you can make, as certification means
the cotton production has met Fairtrade principles. Unfortunately, at this
time, the certification only applies to the cotton production and not to
the working conditions of those manufacturing the clothes. Marks & Spencer
is launching a range of Fairtrade cotton schoolwear, including shirts and
polos. We hope that where it leads, others will follow. Some of Clean Slate’s
items are also made from Fairtrade cotton.
Genetically modified cotton
The promise of genetically modified (GM) cotton was that it would reduce
pesticide use and increase yields. However, Friends of the Earth International
published a report in January 2007 which concluded that GM cotton has improved
neither yields nor the quality of cotton fibre and that GM cotton has not
reduced pesticide use after all.(12) FOE’s report warned of “the
increasing power of a few biotech corporations and agribusinesses,”
claiming that this was affecting farmers, who were “being harassed
and sued by companies like Monsanto for doing what they have been doing
for centuries: saving seeds”.(12)
The environmental problems associated with transgenic cotton are also worrying. Resistant weeds are rapidly becoming
a problem for some growers and in some cases in the USA, farmers have been
“forced to purchase and apply much greater quantities of [the pesticide]
Roundup, to switch to more toxic herbicides in some cases, and also to abandon
erosion-reducing conservation tillage practices”.(12)
When we last looked
at high street clothes shops (EC98), we assumed that they were all utilising
cotton from genetically modified crops. Before collating this research,
we contacted all the companies to ask them for their policy toward genetically
modified cotton. The only company to respond on this issue was Marks &
Spencer, which said that it was “developing a cotton strategy and looking
at how it could grow more sustainable sources of cotton”.(13) Because
of the prevalence of GM cotton all retailers were assumed to be likely to
be selling cotton which had come from genetically modified crops. All organic
cotton products, and since January 2007 all certified Fairtrade cotton,
are GM-free.
Teflon
When looking at the labels of many schoolwear and other children’s
clothing items, you might notice logos of DuPont and Teflon, which is used
as a fabric protector. The problem with Teflon is that certain ingredients
“never break down in the environment, and can build up in the body
over time.”(14) The chemicals concerned, ‘perfluorochemicals’
(PFCs) and Perfluoroctanoaic acid (PFOA), have been found in wildlife ranging
from polar bears to dolphins and in laboratory studies have been “linked
to multiple types of cancer... and birth defects.”(14) DuPont has agreed
to reduce use of PFOAs and will phase it out by 2015.(15)
In the meantime,
the US-based Environmental Working Group advises consumers to minimise exposure
to PFCs and PFOAs, and avoid clothes with Teflon coatings.(14) Consequently,
companies using Teflon receive a criticism under our ‘Pollution and
Toxics’ column. Clean Slate is the only company that has an explicit
no-Teflon policy.
Positive steps
Although there are a lot of ethical issues to think about when it comes
to school uniforms, we should not forget progress made so far. Next is producing certified
organic schoolwear items and these receive a product sustainability mark.
Marks & Spencer has a range from recycled plastic bottles, which receive
a product sustainability mark, as do its items made from Fairtrade cotton.
Although these standards do not address workers’ rights in the supply
chain, they are still positive initiatives and we hope to see other companies
follow suit in addressing environmental issues.
Company ratings
The retailers are not just rated on their policies, but also on the products
that they stock. For example, they will receive marks under Habitats and
Resources for stocking non-FSC certified wood, and under Factory Farming
for selling meat products not originating from organic or free range livestock.
In addition, companies receiving fewer criticisms are not necessarily any
‘cleaner’ than those coming out worse on the table. It’s
just that they may not have been investigated or come under as much pressure
from campaigners. Indeed, given that most Adams clothes are made in Bangaldesh,
China and Vietnam as well,(7) it’s likely that its workers are not
faring any better than those producing clothes for other stores. As a result,
in this particular sector, the ethiscore is not always the best indication
of the better performing companies.
Government intervention
According to War on Want and Action Aid, the time for voluntary initiatives
has passed.(4,5) Despite ten years of initiatives such as the ETI, workers
in supply chains are still being exploited. Both groups are calling for
government legislation prescribing legally enforceable minimum standards.
None of the campaigners are calling for boycotts of companies, arguing that
workers need poorly paid jobs, rather than no jobs at all. Instead, they
argue that we should continue to pressurise companies for better standards
and more transparency, and that we should also pressurise the government
to take more action.
Public debate on uniforms
Many schools restrict where parents can buy their uniform from– stipulating
certain specialist retailers or school shops. Last year, the Office of Fair
Trading (OFT) called such restrictions “a tax on parents,”(1)
finding that restrictive selling was costing parents an extra £45m
a year.(1) In February 2007, Which? set out to find out whether there was
any difference in the quality of schoolwear items between high street and
specialist stores. It found that in three out of four cases, the material
used was similar, with “little or no difference between the garments
after testing”.(1)
As a result of the OFTs review, the Department for
Schools and Families (DfES) is looking at its guidance, and is likely to
continue to urge schools to make uniforms available from more outlets.(1)
However, OFT and DfES have both ignored the ethical issues about how those
garments are sourced and what they’re made from. We hope that this
report will help parents feel more empowered to use ethical information,
as well as cost factors, when making their shopping decisions.
Conclusions
At Ethical Consumer, we try and encourage consumers to favour companies
which are performing better when it comes to ethical issues, in order to
encourage those lagging behind to catch up. This is why we are recommending
Next and Marks & Spencer, even though neither company is free of criticisms.
Both are offering environmentally positive products and both fared well
in Labour Behind the Label’s research last year. However, although
we want to reward the positive steps they have made, we don’t want
to give the impression that by recommending them, they have (to date) successfully
addressed issues of living wages and union membership for workers in their
supply chains. They have not.
Do one thing
If you can’t afford to buy the whole
uniform from our best buy companies, then try and choose at least
one item that’s either second-hand, made from organic or recycled
materials or from Fairtrade cotton. It all adds up.
|
Get active
•
Visit the Environmental Justice Foundation website,
www.ejfoundation.org
and read about cotton farming in its two major reports available to download.
Get active through the site by voicing your concern about child labour on
cotton farms.
•
Read War on Want’s report on low cost retailers at
www.waronwant.org
0207 549 0555
•
Get involved with Action Aid’s Who Pays campaign at
www.actionaid.org.uk/whopays
01460 238000
•
Write to retailers asking them to start adopting more transparent
policies on the issues discussed in this article. Retailer addresses are
listed on the centre pages
•
Buy second hand where you can. Clothes swaps, jumble sales,
freecycle, ebay and charity shops are good places to go for children’s
school wear.
References
1 Which? February 2007, School Uniforms
2 BBC news website,
“Store unveils £10 school uniform” http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/6707519.stm
31/5/07
3 See War on Want “Fashion Victims, The true cost of
cheap clothes at Primark, Asda and Tesco” Published December 2006 and
4 Action Aid “Who Pays, How British Supermarkets are Keeping
Women Workers in Poverty” April 2007
5 Conversation with Paul
Collins of War on Want, 9/7/07
6 Conversation with Dominic Eagleton
of Action Aid, 9/7/07
7 Shop surveys in Manchester in June &
July 2007
8 Conversation with Sam Maher of Labour Behind the Label, 9/7/07
9 Labour Behind the Label website, www.labourbehindthelabel.org/content/view/144/74/
17/10/06
10 Labour Behind the Label factsheet, “living wage”
www.labourbehindthelabel.org/content/view/72/66/
11 Environmental
Justice Foundation “Pick your Cotton Carefully” downloaded from
ejfoundation.org 2007
12 Friends of the Earth International, “Who
Benefits from GM Crops, an analysis of the global performance of GM Crops
1996 – 2006, Executive Summary, January 2007
13 Questions and
answers from M&S, June 2007, emailed to Ethical Consumer
14 www.ewg.org
website, www.ewg.org/node/19261 2006
15 www.epa.gov/opptintr/pfoa/index.htm
updated 22/5/07
16 www.cleanslateclothing.co.uk viewed in July 2007,
17 Observer, 23/4/06
18 Clean up Fashion, Labour Behind the
Label, September 2006
19 Clean Clothes Campaign press release 20/6/06,
20 War on Want, “Growing Pains, the human cost of cut flowers in British
Supermarkets”, March 2007.
21 InMinds website, www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-israel.php
visited 11/7/07 22 Matalan supply chain policy, downloaded in July
2007
23 Mothercare undated environmental policy document, downloaded
from www.mothercare.com in July 2007
24 26/4/06 CSR Asia Weekly
25
Guardian, 21/10/05
26 Guardian, 30/6/07
27 BUAV press release
23/5/07
28 Conversation with BUAV, 11/7/07
29 Guardian 16/7/07