Redress Fashion
From 2007-2009 the P&P network ran Redress Fashion campaign.
Ran as a ‘DIY Campaign’, it had a budget of zero. Despite this it scored some incredible successes. It was split into two halves, both aimed at supporting the struggles of garment workers in the global garment industry.
The garment industry suffers from endemic exploitation with poverty pay well below living wages, repression of unions, unhealthy and dangerous working condtions and managerial abuse of workers. P&Ps campaigns aimed at, on the one hand,
Redress Fashion This aimed at getting Primark and then Topshop into the Ethical Trading Initiative, an initiative aimed at getting companies to work with unions and NGOs to improve their workers’ conditions.
- Primark have now joined the ETI, although they need to go much further on labour rights
- Topshop have started reacting to pressure, but slowly.
Workers in Honduras voting to reopen Jerzees factory
Redress Education This aimed at making universities beacons for sweatfree purchasing of garments, and for their supply chains to pay living wages ‘from seed to shirt’, including to workers in the university shops that sell them. It targetted Fruit of the Loom which supplies many UK universities with garments, and was accused in 2008 of shutting down a Honduran factory due to union activity, pushing 1200 people out of work. The campaign was successful, ending with the company
Re-hiring all 1200 workers who have been without jobs for 10 months or more
Paying $1.2 million in back pay and compensation to the workers that were dismissed
Thereby establishing the first company-recognised union in the Honduran garment industry
Ending prevention of unions organising in any of their other Honduran factories
