Child Labor in the Fast Fashion Era

As a student at Stanford, it’s difficult to imagine the reality of child labor. Imagine being sent by your family to a garment factory when you’re twelve. It’s your first day, and the man in charge tells you your quota is to sew 60 pockets an hour. The others, all women like you, are already fast at work, speeding through the pockets at their sewing machines.

You sit down at your station, hands shaking. You’re worried you won’t make the quota. For the past few months, there hasn’t been anything, even rice, for your family to eat. Without your salary, your family will continue to starve. So you quickly begin to work.

A few minutes in, you see movement in your periphery. You look out the window, curious. There, walking in their blue and white uniforms, are girls your age on their way to school. They laugh and skip; you watch in envy. You always wanted to be a doctor. But instead, here you are, working to survive.

For a girl named Bithi, this story is her reality. Now three years older, Bithi still works in the same factory. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), she’s one of around 170 million child laborers globally. But Bithi says her factory is a good one. Her boss is nice and the factory has no fires. She even got the rest of the day off once when she injured herself sewing.

And it’s true, however horrifying her conditions, Bithi is fortunate among child laborers. In 2013, a building in Bangladesh that housed factories producing clothing for various Western brands collapsed. 1,127 were killed, and many more injured. Aanna, one of the workers in the factory, was thirteen at the time. Her hand was amputated to remove her from the rubble. Although she escaped death, her life was still forever changed; she now has PTSD, severe pain, and a permanent disability that hinders her from returning to school.

Stories like Bithi’s and Aanna’s are commonplace. 11% of the world’s children are working in situations that deprive them of education, fair wages, and safe conditions. This epidemic can be traced to a shift in the structure of fashion. Since the early 2000s, a new form of manufacturing has taken hold of the industry: fast fashion.

Fast fashion is clothing that is cheap, follows trends, and has a short turnaround time from runway to retail. The world now moves through trends faster, people buy more clothes, and the fashion industry is driven by consumer demand. This created a race to produce, forcing popular brands like Forever 21, H&M, Urban Outfitters, and Zara to find cheap labor. Thus, child labor is rampant in many countries where textile and garment production take place.

Each layer of the fashion supply chain (cotton, textiles, garments, etc.) is rife with child labor: from the cotton seed production in Benin and cotton harvesting in Uzbekistan, where children are subjected to long hours and exposed to pesticides, to yarn spinning in India and garment assembly in Bangladesh, where children work with dangerous chemicals and machines.

But with child labor laws in place, why have corporations failed to curb this abuse? Essentially, their ignorance is to blame. Even with structures existing to regulate conditions in factories, it is still difficult to control every stage in the supply chain. In the fast fashion era, brands rarely consistently work with the same suppliers, making it harder to ensure they meet company standards.

A common problem has risen in the supply chain, where work assigned by companies is subcontracted to other factories that the buyer may not even know about. In order to meet deadlines, many manufacturers subcontract certain parts of their production process to other factories without notifying the buying company. And these subcontracted factories often aren’t protected by labor laws, as they operate in the informal sector.

The fashion industry has begun initial efforts to stop child labor. Organizations like the Fair Wear Foundation, which lists over 120 brands that have signed onto its code of labor practices, ensure that accredited brands meet standards and audit frequently. Yet even these attempts can be futile; audits are often flawed and ineffective. Suppliers find loopholes, and children continue to suffer.

Another option would be for people to call for a boycott, but history shows why this doesn’t work. In the mid-1990s, anti-sweatshop advocacy swept into mainstream American culture, and most major apparel brands faced a boycott campaign. For a while, it worked; some large suppliers formalized workforces, instituted better health and safety procedures, and paid above minimum wage.

But behind a group of protestors, there is always a line of customers. Boycotting and “buying right” don’t affect the places in which these clothes are being made. Clothing tags rarely give insight into the manufacturing process. Companies’ investigations cannot penetrate the opaque supply chain.

Thus, we must rely on companies’ reputations; reputation is crucial to a brand’s success. To ensure proper labor conditions and ethical production, reputation and corporate responsibility must be emphasized. It is in these companies’ best interest to address child labor in their supply chains as insurance against bad publicity. Brands should be forced to eradicate child labor throughout their supply chains through policies and laws.

There is no room to be complacent. It’s important to remember that beneath this massive economic system, there are children. Children like Bithi and Aanna hold up an entire industry with their fingers, spinning, soaking, and sewing.

written by Evan Peng & Griffin Somaratne

modeled by Chris Iyer, Six Skov & Grace Wang

photos by Amy Zhang