Fast fashion relies on outsourcing and subcontracting.
Fast fashion is largely dependent on the Global Production Network, a term used to describe a system in which several companies across multiple countries are involved in production. Fast fashion brands like H&M and Gap, headquartered in high-income countries, play a major role in a product line’s value creation, such as market research, design, sales, marketing, and financial services.
These issues are exacerbated with the use of short-term contracts. This temporary work status allows suppliers to easily hire and fire workers to adjust to fluctuations in production needs and help facilitate location moves. For example, the report details how a Gap supplier factory planned to move from Bekasi, West Java to a nearby town with significantly lower minimum wage by reducing its permanent workforce from 6000 workers to 1500, with the majority of workers retaining contract statuses.
Since the threat of termination is a constant, workers are less likely to report instances of workplace abuse. In fact, the threat of employer retaliation extends beyond an employee’s workplace at the time the violation takes place. One woman in GLJ’s Gap report explained, “Once a worker makes a complaint, she won’t be able to get a job in any of the factories. She will be blacklisted.”
Poor and exploitative work conditions result in gender-based violence.
Women make up the vast majority of garment workers in fast fashion supplier factories. For instance, eighty to ninety-five percent gender majority in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka. Further, management positions are male-dominated, while women typically work as machine operators and checkers. This results in a hierarchical power structure in which a male-majority management controls a female-majority workforce.
The defining characteristic of fast fashion — the constant cranking of new trends to consume — drives production targets that can never be met, putting female garment workers at risk of severe physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.
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