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Let's be friendsThe global journey of a shirt
Click bottom left to enlarge. Map showing a shirt’s supply chain across the globe.
This section takes you on a journey around the world, following the making of a school uniform or sports shirt all the way back to where the cotton was picked. The shirt is not made from Fairtrade cotton, and a lot of pain and misery have gone into making it.
Unfair Schools
Uniforms and sports kits in schools are bought by families from local shops, supermarkets or directly from the school.
Supermarkets and high street stores sell uniforms 50% cheaper every year, with an entire uniform being slashed to a mere £4 in some supermarkets this year. This is good news for families, but what happens to the wages of the people picking the cotton and sewing the uniform? Feeding and clothing their families doesn’t get any cheaper.
Garment factory workers
Over in Bangladesh, or another country where wages are low and conditions for workers bad, the supermarket’s ‘buyer’ has just told the factory owner he needs to cut his prices, and quick. The only way to do this is to cut wages to 5p per hour, and up the hours to 80 per week.
Image © Marissa Orton
“When a large order comes in we are made to work day after day of night shifts, and then after finishing at 5am we have to be back at our machines by 8am. There is no choice, the supervisors say it has to be done.”
Sumiya Rahmen, a 22 year old machine operator making school uniforms for Asda in Bangladesh. Source: ActionAid, Who Pays? Report
Unfair World Trade
Rich farming businesses in Europe, Japan and America get $4.8 billion per year from their rich governments, so they can charge lower prices than poor African cotton farmers, who don’t get free money. This means that no-one will buy the African farmer’s cotton at a good price, and they may go bust or even start to starve.
“Cotton prices are too low to keep our children in school, or to buy food and pay for health. Some farmers are already leaving. Another season like this will destroy our community.”
Mr. Brahima Ouattara, a small-scale cotton farmer in Logokourani, Burkina Faso
Cotton pickers
In the year 2000 in Burkina Faso, 50 percent of children were employed in some form of activity. Many women and children are trafficked for forced prostitution, forced labour on plantations and domestic work.
Source: Afrol News
A child working in a cotton field in Uzbekistan
Image © EJF
Children wear cheap uniforms, but sadly, children often pick the cotton in them too. Often cotton is picked by children who are forced to work long days, trafficked, or by women who are denied the human right of joining a union.*
So a cheap uniform that works well for families over in the UK can in fact have a brutal effect on the women, men and children that pick the cotton, and sew together the uniform.
Find out what we can about it
*This can apply to any cotton that does not have the FAIRTRADE Mark. It may or may not refer to Asda’s cotton. They have not yet answered our questions about the source of their cotton.
