Revelations that fast-fashion giant Boohoo have been engaging in labour practices including paying workers in their Leicester factories as little as £3 an hour have been met with the expected moral indignation from competitors who, of course, would never dream of exploiting workers. Boohoo, who own Pretty Little Thing, Misguided, and Nasty Gal, have seen their share price drop a staggering 33% in just two days. This can be put down to not only the bad press, but the wave of associated companies cutting ties with Boohoo for ‘moral reasons’. These companies taking a stand against worker exploitation by cutting ties with what is essentially a major competitor include Amazon, Next, ASOS, and Zalando. For a company touted as the main rival to clothing giants Zara and H&M, this is a major blow. The response from Boohoo has been an internal investigation into slavery in their supply chain; this may serve to placate some, but the damage, it seems, has largely been done.
Though orthodoxy dictates that associated companies will of course cut ties following one of their own being rumbled for the very practices they all engage in at some level of their supply chains, revelations such as these serve to remind us of the human cost of £2 T-shirts. Boohoo’s rivals would like us to believe that stories like this are anomalies, and do not represent the so-called ‘values’ of the industry as a whole. But the textiles industry has always been highly exploitative. Dating back to the industrial revolution in Britain, where fabric was spun by poverty stricken workers in England from slave-picked cotton from the America’s. Today, we see clothing in the form of mass-produced fast-moving consumer-goods leaving a trail of hardship in its wake, with sweatshops in east Asia producing the clothes and exploited workers in the UK handling warehousing and logistics.
Each time a scandal like this is brought to light, many journalists point out that worker exploitation, ecological damage, and unsustainable products are of course the result of being able to buy clothing at such low-cost.
I don’t want to pile on with those condemning those on low-incomes who shop at Primark for supporting the only clothing brands they can afford. It is not the duty of the individual to change the practices of multinational conglomerates, nor is it in their capability. Whether it’s fast-fashion or climate change, those in power would rather we blamed ourselves for the injustices of a capitalist system rather than the companies who profit from them, or the governments who help them do it. The fact is that this story only broke into the headlines because the slavery was happening in Britain, as opposed to some East-Asian country most people couldn’t identify on a map. Child labour and mass exploitation of those in poorer countries is what sustains our fast-moving cheap fashion industry. It is what propelled Britain to become an imperial superpower 300 years ago, and what maintains its status as a major western economy to this day.
The fact is that Boohoo have been caught out doing what is absolutely necessary to maintain an industry selling such cheap goods. Other companies may try and distance themselves, and will likely put money into PR promoting their ‘values’ in an attempt to cash in on the growing distrust of large corporations. The fact is Boohoo got caught out because they shat where they eat. The reality of modern slavery is easy to ignore when happening in China, Malaysia, or Vietnam, but not so much when it happens in Leicester. If ever there was an example of British exceptionalism, and the moral hypocrisy it perpetuates, this is it.
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