The True Cost of Clothing

Forced laborers in Bangladesh

Human Trafficking has become a very prominent issue in today’s media and news. The rising concern for the abolishment of modern day slavery is an amazing movement, however many people only focus on the sex labor aspect of human enslavement. Agricultural, construction, and domestic work is the largest sector of forced labor in the world. 68% of the approximately 21 million people that are victims of forced labor fall into this division. These people are left helpless and stuck in a continuous cycle of poverty. 

The trap that the majority of those that are subject to forced labor in textile and garment factories, as well as those who farm cotton and other materials for these factories, is a very simple trap that anyone that is put through these kinds of conditions could easily fall into. The amount of money that laborers make already in these factories is not nearly enough to sustain a life for themselves, let alone the lives of their entire families. A simple, short-term, solution to this issue would be to borrow money from whomever they may work for. What seems like a good idea and a small amount of money quickly turns into an entire mountain of debt and no way to escape. Loans of this nature usually have extremely high interest rates placed on them. This forces laborers to continue to work in the same conditions with practically no means of escape. The workers are subject to horrifying conditions in which they receive no benefits. Many workers die every year due to the extremely unsafe working conditions of the factories. In 2013, a Bangladeshi factory called Rana Plaza collapsed and killed 1,129 people. There were another 2,515 people that survived the collapse but were still severely injured. The day before the incident, large cracks were noticed throughout the building but they were ignored. Workers were forced to return to their work and disregard the cracks. Although these workers may have not been forced laborers, these conditions exemplify the conditions under which many enslaved laborers are forced to work.

Dov Charney, CEO of American Apparel

The very obvious solution to this issue would be to not support the companies that employ enslaved peoples. Although this answer seems like it would solve the problem, this could potentially leave these workers without a job completely. If the public no longer supports these businesses there is the possibility that they could financially collapse and then the jobs and “salaries” of those who work for them would collapse and cease to exist. The real solution is to change these industries. Dov Charney, the founder and CEO of American Apparel, a company that publicly advertises "sweatshop-free" clothing, proposes a “Global Garment Workers Minimum Wage”. This minimum wage could be regulated through the country’s government. If the government is not stable enough to enforce these standards, the United Nations could potentially control these wages. Another more short-term solution to this issue would be to popularize “free-labor” clothing. If companies that did not employ forced laborers would become more public about this, the idea would become more popularized and those companies that did enslave workers would have to eventually address the issue at hand. This could be done by placing labels on clothing that identifies it as being produced through free labor. These are very viable and practical way to abolish forced labor entirely. The consumers must be the ones to initiate change. The corporations enslaving these workers know that people will buy products if they are cheap. The way to cut down cost is through forced labor. This is why consumers must be willing to change their habits and speak out against what is unjust.