Category: Labour rights

Queensland based clothing brand Certton has recently joined 42 other companies to become accredited to Ethical Clothing Australia (ECA). ECA certifies that workers in Australia have access to legally mandated conditions and are paid according to the industry award. Read more »

In November adidas announced that it expects to grow annual revenues by almost 50% to approximately $23 billion AUS by 2015. Despite this prosperous outlook, the company has shown little generosity to the women and men making adidas’ products on poverty wages. Read more »

Supporting labour rights is— fundamentally—about supporting an end to global poverty. The Global Rights at Work project shows how education and skills building can help women and men in developing countries to secure better working conditions…and better lives. Read more »

Who needs to take responsibility to ensure that garment workers are not assigned to a life of poverty? According to former child factory worker, Nazma Akhter, not only local manufacturers, but also Western buyers must step up to the challenge. Read more »

Just Group owns many Australian household brands including Just Jeans, Jacqui E, Jay Jays, Portmans, Peter Alexander, Dotti, and Smiggle. Unfortunately, the company has not taken the steps needed to uphold workers’ rights within Australia and in its and overseas supplier factories. Read more »

Human rights advocates have criticised the Uzbek cotton industry for its reliance on forced-labour including the mandatory employment of school children, college and university students, and civil servants. Workers face terrible conditions and are barely paid enough to survive. Read more »

Where Underpants Come From takes us on a journey to discover the origin of undies. This journey begins when author Joe Bennet purchases a 5-pack of Made in China underpants for $8.59 at his local New Zealand supermarket. Read more »

If you believe that the exploitation of garment workers only takes place in developing countries—think again. In Australia homeworkers are mostly women who make clothes in their houses commonly situated in the outer suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne. They often work up to 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, receiving as little as $3 an hour. Read more »

This is the sort of pump which is generally used in rental house areas, including my family’s home. This single pump is used by about 10 different rental houses (20-30 people). Because of the large amount of people using it sometimes the water comes up murky. Read more »

After years toiling at factories in the free trade zones of the Dominican Republic, Santa Castillo knows how difficult it can be to survive on the minimum wage. “A lot of times there was only enough for my kids, and I’d go to bed hungry,” she says. Now the factory where Ms Castillo works has committed to pay three and a half times the minimum wage. Read more »