About the campaign
We love fashion. But the clothes we buy in the UK come at a terrible cost. Millions of workers around the world suffer poverty wages and exploitation, producing cheap fashion for our shops. This can’t go on. We demand a fashion industry that respects workers’ rights. Our government must act now to protect the people who make our clothes.
War on Want is leading the biggest ever call for the government to regulate companies and put an end to the exploitation of overseas workers. We are asking people to add their faces, names and voices to our campaign against sweatshops. Our aim is to have 50,000 people join our call for immediate government action. It’s an ambitious goal, but together we can bring an end to sweatshops.
War on Want’s research on the sweatshop conditions facing the workers who make our clothes has made front page news and attracted attention nationwide. Yet in spite of widespread awareness of the issue, it is not always clear what practical steps members of the UK public can take to end sweatshop labour abroad. Asking companies to regulate themselves hasn’t worked. Boycotts have only led to further job losses.
Real change can only be achieved through government regulation that protects the rights of workers supplying UK companies. War on Want is leading the biggest ever call to end the exploitation of workers. We are demanding that the government regulate the business practices of UK retailers to ensure that overseas workers are guaranteed a living wage, decent working conditions and the right to join a trade union. Gordon Brown must commit to government action.
This is a big job – change won’t come overnight. But it’s also a necessary one. Together we can end the injustice of sweatshops, and ensure the dignity of workers everywhere.
Click here to read our latest briefing paper full of evidence that despite the 2006 Labour Law, conditions for Bangladeshi workers remain intolerable.
You can also learn more about the issue of sweatshops by reading our reports:
And the latest report from Labour Behind the Label, an organisation working to end labour rights abuses in the fashion industry which has provided much of the research behind Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops:
For all media enquiries please call Paul Collins on 07983 550 728 or 020 7549 0584.
Alternatively you can email pcollins@waronwant.org or visit http://www.waronwant.org/news/press-releases