News Release: Students take direct action to hang out Topshop’s dirty laundry in public
On Thursday 6 December the UK’s largest student campaigning organisation People & Planet hung out Topshop’s dirty laundry on high streets across the country. People & Planet groups took direct action in at least 14 cities across the UK — from Brighton to Dundee — to expose the impact of the company’s business practices on wages and labour standards for workers in the fashion industry.
Protesters say “Pants to Primark!” at new store opening in Liverpool
People & Planet is targeting Topshop as the flagship store of the Arcadia Group as part of their campaign to ‘Redress Fashion’. The recent BBC Newsnight report that cotton used to make Topshop clothes was picked by using forced child labour in Uzbekistan and the Sunday Times’ report of “Topshop’s clothes made with ‘slave labour’” in Mauritius are just the latest examples of exploitation in its supply chain.
Sarah Waldron, Campaigns Officer at People & Planet, says: “Arcadia’s reaction to the evidence of exploitation has been disappointing - each time responsibility is passed onto their suppliers. They seem happy to blame someone else rather than address their own business practices. If the Arcadia Group is serious about improving conditions in its supply chain it must join the Ethical Trading Initiative as a first step”.
The start of Topshop’s washing line of shame at Shared Planet 2007
Chris Davy
People & Planet groups will be setting up washing lines outside stores to hang out Topshop’s dirty laundry, and will invite members of the public to peg up their own messages exposing the company’s poor record on employment practices and calling on them to take action. In Edinburgh, People & Planet activists will be advertising ‘jobs’ in Topshop, with the poverty wages and long hours endured by those who make the company’s clothes.
Anna Wolmuth, Redress Fashion Campaigner at People & Planet, says: “Topshop CEO Philip Green’s bonus in 2005 was enough to double the wages of the entire Cambodian garment workforce for 8 years. We hope our actions will expose the injustice and exploitation endemic in the fashion industry and force the company to make a serious commitment to paying a living wage and recognising the right to organise in a trade union”.
ENDS
For more information please contact: Anna Wolmuth, Redress Fashion Campaigner at People & Planet — 01865 245678/ 07952 254487/ anna.wolmuth@peopleandplanet.org
Notes to editors:
1) Actions took place in Brighton, London, Reading, Oxford, Leamington Spa, Bristol, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, York, Durham, Edinburgh and Dundee.
2) People & Planet is a dynamic student campaigning network, taking action on the root causes of poverty, injustice and environmental destruction. The People & Planet network consists of campaigning groups in universities, colleges and sixth forms, as well as individual campaigners.
People & Planet’s Redress Fashion campaign focuses on what students can do to support the struggles of garment workers worldwide. The business practices of UK retailers, demanding ever cheaper prices and faster delivery times, mean poverty wages and long hours for workers in the fashion industry. Companies need a clear commitment, at the highest level, to ensuring respect for workers’ rights. The campaign calls for retailers to pay suppliers enough for workers to receive a living wage, ensure that workers are free to organise in trade unions and speak out, and that information about conditions throughout their supply chains is available for independent monitoring.
People & Planet is a member of Labour behind the Label, a campaign that supports garment workers’ efforts worldwide to improve their working conditions, through awareness raising, information provision and encouraging international solidarity between workers and consumers. Labour behind the Label coordinates the UK platform of the Clean Clothes Campaign an international campaign, focused on improving working conditions in the global garment and sportswear industries, and empower the workers in it.
Labour Behind the Label’s “Let’s clean up fashion” report investigates the state of pay behind the UK high street, interrogating the biggest players in the fashion industry, to see what progress has been made, in the decade since consumers, workers and campaigners began calling on fashion brands to make sure the workers who produce the clothes they sell are paid a living wage.
In March 2007 People & Planet groups protested outside Primark stores in six cities, raising awareness of the worker exploitation behind their bargains. As a result Primark has recently announced it will be making its ethical strategy publicly available, a small but important step towards demonstrating an intention to use its membership of the ETI for active change, rather than as a cosmetic exercise.
3) Billionaire Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group owns Topshop, Topman, Outfit, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Wallis and Miss Selfridge. Despite a difficult retail climate, the company recently posted an annual operating profit of nearly £300 million, an increase of 1.6% in the year until 1 September.
4) Recent examples of unacceptable conditions in the Arcadia group’s supply chain include a report from the BBC’s Newsnight, which found Uzbek cotton - picked with forced child labour - in Topman’s supply chain.
In August, the Times ran a report: Revealed: Topshop clothes made with ‘slave labour’
5) The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) focuses on improving the implementation of ‘codes of practice’ on supply chain working conditions. The ETI is an alliance of companies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and trade unions. It was set up in the late 1990s as a result of public pressure on companies to ensure decent working conditions for the people producing their goods.
On Wednesday 5 December Gareth Thomas, Minister for Trade and Development called on the Arcadia Group to join the ETI, saying “The sad fact is that the conditions for the workers that supply us can fall way below what we would expect. That simply is not good enough … UK retailers have a responsibility to make sure their suppliers pay a living wage. We need UK retailers to give their customers more information about where the things they buy come from and how they are made”