2024
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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 over 50 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
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
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
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
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
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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March 19, 2024
Cycling giant Specialized remains stationary in wage theft case
The Clean Clothes Campaign is disappointed to learn that Salvadoran workers, producing apparel for Specialized, are still owed US$659,000 in unpaid wages and severance – a year and a half after losing their jobs, leaving them struggling to make ends meet.
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March 7, 2024
Factory workers of Serbian socks supplier Valy triumph over unauthorised overtime practices
98 trade union members received the overtime payment from Serbian socks supplier Valy that was withheld over the preceding 2.5 years.
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February 28, 2024
Today the Council of the European Union struck a blow to corporate accountability and workers’ rights in the garment and footwear industry by failing to endorse a deal it had made with the European Parliament and the Commission on landmark legislation to protect human rights and the environment from corporate abuse.
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February 28, 2024
Bleaching chemicals used on jeans have devastating effects on workers and environment
A new report published today by Clean Clothes Campaign Turkey reveals the harmful effects of potassium permanganate (PP) bleaching of jeans on worker health and the environment. The report, which covers 44 brands, focuses on the impact of PP chemical use on worker health and environmental pollution in the Ergene Basin, which is now unsuitable for agricultural purposes.
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February 26, 2024
Victory for newly unionised garment workers in Nike factory, Sri Lanka
After months of struggle and uncertainty, 18 workers of a Nike sock factory in Sri Lanka, who were suspended for forming a branch union, are now back at their jobs with the branch union in place. This victory shows that union busting has no place in garment supply chains and that workers standing together and international solidarity can make a real difference.
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February 21, 2024
Union activists in Bangladesh beaten and threatened for exercising their right to organise
Last week, on 15 February 2024, union organisers and activists of the Akota Garment Worker Federation (AGWF) in Bangladesh were beaten, threatened, and subsequently hospitalised. The attack followed an attempt by workers of the Libas Textiles factory in Gazipur, to establish a factory union that would join the AGWF.
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February 16, 2024
Solidarity with striking garment workers at Sumithra Hasalaka, Sri Lanka!
Around 300 members of the Free Trade Zones & General Services Employees Union (FTZ & GSEU) at the Sumithra Hasalaka factory in Sri Lanka, have been out on strike since Saturday 10th February 2024.
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February 1, 2024
Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) stands in solidarity with all those working to end military rule in Myanmar and fully supports the call to restore democracy and to respect and uphold human rights.
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January 4, 2024
Factories and brands disregarded workers’ rights in the wake of Türkiye’s 2023 earthquake
Interviews with 100+ workers shows that garment factories and their buyers left workers to fend for themselves after the devastating earthquake that hit Türkiye in February 2023. As most of them were not paid in full in the aftermath of the earthquake, workers had to return to their jobs out of financial necessity without having a safe place to live and before the factories they worked in had undergone any structural safety inspections.
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