News overview
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July 25, 2024
Ahead of Nike’s record Olympic spend, investors and activists urge Nike to settle debt with workers
On the eve of the Olympic games, a coalition of human rights advocates and major Nike investors are calling on the sportswear giant to pay garment workers in their supply chain the $2.2 million they have been owed for four years. Nike has spent more on this Olympics and is more visible at the games than ever before. While Nike is throwing billions at trying to bolster its image 70 investors are publicly demanding the company pay their workers and are bringing the issue to Nike’s September annual meeting through a resolution.
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July 8, 2024
Campaign groups call on Inditex to stop airborne fashion
Inditex, the parent company of brands such as Zara, is continuing to transport huge volumes of fast fashion items by air, causing considerable damage to the climate. In 2023, its transport-related CO2 emissions increased by 37%, reaching an all-time high. As the company’s management is ignoring a call by more than 26,000 people for it to change its course, Public Eye, Clean Clothes Campaign and other campaign groups are now turning to the shareholders of the Spanish fast-fashion group.
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June 26, 2024
Clean Clothes Campaign calls upon ILO Better Work brands to ensure its critics will not be silenced
Cambodian labour rights organisation Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) is under increasing threat since it released a research report on 4 June. The report focused on the effectiveness of processes in the International Labour Organisation’s Better Factories Cambodia (ILO-BFC) programme in which brands like H&M, Inditex, C&A, and Nike participate. It addresses specifically employer-imposed barriers to freedom of association. Though at times critical, the report is certainly not an attack against the BFC or the ILO but meant as a critical evaluation that can be used to improve the BFC’s mechanisms and processes.
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June 25, 2024
One year since trade unionist’s murder, brands fail to take responsibility
Exactly one year ago, on 25 June 2023, trade union activist Shahidul Islam, was attacked and killed in front of the Prince Jacquard Sweater Ltd factory in Bangladesh. Despite repeated outreach by the Clean Clothes Campaign network to the garment brands identified as sourcing at the factory, the family has received almost no compensation from brands. Today, we commemorate Shahidul Islam’s life and activism and urge all involved brands to take responsibility and all brands sourcing from Bangladesh to take meaningful measures to ensure workers’ right to organise.
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June 21, 2024
Clean Clothes Campaign strongly condemns the ongoing smear campaign against independent labour rights NGO in Cambodia
The Center for Alliance of Labor and Human Rights (CENTRAL) recently published a report on Freedom of Association in the garment industry, and was confronted with a smear campaign and false accusations shortly after.
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June 21, 2024
Trail of broken promises: Levi’s denies justice to unlawfully fired workers in Türkiye
After a serious instance of union busting at the Levi’s supply factory Özak Tekstil in Şanlıurfa, Türkiye, late in 2023, Levi’s made promises to uphold workers’ rights to freedom of association that the company failed to live up to in subsequent months. In response tonew research into the violations by the Worker Rights Consortium published earlier today, Clean Clothes Campaign renews its call on Levi’s to live up to its earlier promises and protect its workers’ right to organise freely.
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May 27, 2024
Human rights and labour rights organisations express concern about planned changes to Sri Lankan Labour law
Amnesty International, Clean Clothes Campaign, and Human Rights urgently call on the Sri Lankan Government to halt the current proposals for a new Labour Law and to ensure that reforms to the labour laws are only taken after due consultation with workers and their representatives. These organisations express serious concerns the proposed reforms which, as they stand, would weaken the rights and protection of workers by removing international minimum standards and rights. The concerns expressed in this letter reflect and follow repeatedly expressed protests and alarm by a broad coalition of unions and civil society organisations in Sri Lanka.
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May 15, 2024
The Clean Clothes Campaign stands in solidarity with the workers of Palestine on Nakba Day 2024
As a global network of over 220 organisations in 45 countries organising to structurally improve working conditions and build the power of manufacturing workers in global garment and sportswear supply chains, we respond to the call from the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions for international solidarity on Nakba day to “raise our voices and take action to disrupt the flow of commerce and trade that sustains Israel’s military colonisation of the palestinian occupied teritory and exploitation of Palestinian workers”.
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May 14, 2024
Cambodian union leader travels to Germany to address adidas' shareholders on behalf of unpaid workers
On Thursday, 16 May, adidas will inform its investors about last year's wins and losses at the Annual General Meeting. To ensure that shareholders get the full picture on this day, Sithyneth Ry, a Cambodian union president representing 500 unpaid workers in adidas' supply chain, will travel to Germany to inform investors about the workers' plight. Furthermore, activist investors will urge adidas to sign the Pay Your Workers - Respect Labour Rights agreement to ensure that workers are not left penniless during supply chain disruptions in the wake of the climate crisis.
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April 24, 2024
Compromise EU law will start holding companies accountable, 11 years after Rana Plaza collapse
In a landmark vote, the European Parliament approved the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), a law representing a first step towards global value chains free from human rights and labour abuses as well as environmental harm. The text the Parliament green-lighted will cover only a very small minority of EU companies. The law also provides different enforcement options for Member States and avenues to remedy and justice for victims. However, the Directive still lacks rules removing obstacles victims face when they try to access justice in European courts. The final text does not include crucial International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Conventions on Occupational Safety and Health, leaving workers in hazardous and potentially lethal conditions. Clean Clothes Campaign will continue to advocate for ambitious rules during the transposition of the law by Member States.
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April 24, 2024
Remembering the Rana Plaza collapse
Today, we commemorate that eleven years ago 1,138 people lost their lives in the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh. Our thoughts are with the people who lost loved ones in this tragedy and with every worker who lived through it. We will keep on fighting side by side with garment workers' unions to make clear that workers’ lives are not a commodity and can not be treated as disposable.
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April 23, 2024
Statement on CCC's role in governance of Fair Wear Foundation
Collaboration between the CCC Network and Fair Wear will take a different shape. Per spring of 2024, the representatives of the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) network are no longer part of the Board and Committee of Experts of the Fair Wear Foundation ('Fair Wear').
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April 17, 2024
11 years since the Rana Plaza collapse factories are safer but the root causes of tragedy persist
24 April 2024 will mark the 11th anniversary of the fashion industry’s worst tragedy: the collapse of the Rana Plaza building, killing 1,138 people. The catastrophic death and injury toll was caused by a deadly mix of fashion brands ignoring dangerous factory conditions, poverty wages, and centrally, constraints on workers’ ability to organise collectively. While unprecedented progress has been made to make factories safer, the brutal crackdown on workers’ rights still unfolding in response to protests to increase the minimum wage has shown that apparel brands producing in Bangladesh are still failing to ensure that the basic rights of their workers are respected.
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April 10, 2024
Sri Lankan workers continue two-months long strike for decent wages, while brands fail to take sufficient action
On 10 February 2024, workers of the Sumithra Hasalaka factory in Sri Lanka organised by the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union (FTZ & GSEU) startedstriking for a wage offer that meets their cost of living. Two months on, these brave workers’ strike continues in the face of harassment and intimidation, financial hardship, and during the most important family holiday of the year, the Sinhala and Tamil new year. International brands sourcing from the factory group have taken insufficient action to ensure their suppliertreatsworkers better.
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April 2, 2024
Levi’s breaks promise to workers in union busting struggle at Turkish garment factory
Workers at a Levi’s supplier in Türkiyehave faced harassment, attacks, arrests, and dismissal for exercising their right to chose their own union representation. Despite committing to the union that it would pressure the factory management to rehire unlawfully terminated union members, four months since the start of the conflict, Levi’s is still producing clothes at the factory and has stopped communicating with the union and labour rights advocates supporting them.
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March 19, 2024
Industry statements about Bangladesh crackdown belie fashion brands’ abject failure to protect their garment workers
In the wake of the fundamentally flawed Bangladesh minimum wage protest of 2023 that led to the setting of another poverty wage, the government of Bangladesh cracked down hard on workers’ protests. Criminal charges, often filed by suppliers to major international brands, are now hanging over the heads of tens of thousands of workers. Yet, through recent industry statements, brands attempt to wash their hands of the responsibility for both the setting of yet another wage that leaves workers unable to put enough food on the table and of the legal threats now facing them.
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