DAVID ADAMS reports…
The ethical practices of 128 clothing brands have come under scrutiny in a new report released by Baptist World Aid Australia on Monday.
The Australian Fashion Report – the culmination of two years of research – rates 41 different clothing companies which operate in Australia including some multinational companies – according to what degree they have ensured the workers in their supply chain aren’t being exploited, forced into labour or are children.
“Once you step outside of the manufacturing process into where fabrics are made or where raw materials are made, so few brands knew what was going on – 93 per cent of brands had no idea at the raw materials stage and about 76 per cent at the fabric stage, which is quite bad because that’s often where some of the worst abuses occur.”
– Gershon Nimbalker, advocacy manager at Baptist World Aid and one of the report’s authors
It found only five per cent of the companies included had a fully implemented policy ensuring workers received a living wage – that is, a wage sufficient to cover a family’s basic living costs, while only 12 per cent of them received a grading of A for their labour rights management systems.
Only two companies – Fair Trade organisations 3Fish and Etiko – received an overall grade of A or A+ while another three had grades of A-. Five companies received grades of F.
Gershon Nimbalker, advocacy manager at Baptist World Aid and one of the report’s authors, says the document arose out of Baptist World Aid’s desire to see all the workers in the world “treated fairly and…given a fair go”.
“Baptist World Aid goes around engaging people on social justice issues and those people keep reflecting back to us that they really want to know that the products they are purchasing are made ethically,” he says.
“But they just struggle to know how to do that – there’s not clear information out there. So that’s what gave us the idea of putting this report together – to give them a simple tool so they can now go out and shop ethically…”
Mr Nimbalker says that more than 60 per cent of the companies named in the guide “engaged in the process”. “And that’s generally reflected in their grades. The companies that did talk to us received better grades, Those that we could only go off publicly available information – codes of conduct they had available; audit reports they had available – they’re the companies that didn’t fare so well.”
He adds that a number of the companies – including David Jones and Kmart – had been in touch since the launch of the report to provide further information. “Certainly now companies are really engaged in this process.”
Mr Nimbalker says that while a lot of brands were doing a lot to ensure ethical standards were maintained at the manufacturing stage “what was surprising and perhaps shocking was how little brands actually knew about what was happening deeper down in their supply chain”.
“Once you step outside of the manufacturing process into where fabrics are made or where raw materials are made, so few brands knew what was going on – 93 per cent of brands had no idea at the raw materials stage and about 76 per cent at the fabric stage, which is quite bad because that’s often where some of the worst abuses occur.”
The overall findings of the report has been condensed into a pocket guide – the Ethical Fashion Guide – which provides consumers which the overall ratings companies received in the larger report as well as whether brands guarantee a living wage and whether they have committed to boycotting Uzbekistani cotton, picked by forced child labour.
Mr Nimbalker says it’s envisaged that the guide will be updated at least annually and adds that further companies will be included.
“We’d also like to look at more industries,” he says. “We’re bringing it under the banner of the Behind the Barcode project where this is just the first report and we’d like to keep releasing more. But in order to do that of course, we need funding to do that so we’re always looking for people to donate to that project, and we need people to engage with the report to show that it has value.”
The report can be downloaded for free from www.behindthebarcode.org.au.
