Where Do Your Jeans Come From? Emilia Is 24 Years Old and Works in a Factory Which Makes Fashion Jeans in Asia
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Read the text. Where do your jeans come from? Emilia is 24 years old and works in a factory which makes fashion jeans in Asia. She lives in a camp for the workers near the factory. She works 75 hours a week. In Europe the average working week is 35–40 hours a week. Emilia earns $5 a day which is less than the minimum wage. She finds it difficult to buy enough food to eat. The minimum wage in the UK is £5 per hour. Emilia works 7 days a week and only gets time off a couple of times a year. ‘Another terrible thing is the production quotas. I have to make a certain number of pairs of jeans every day. So I work and sleep. Every day is like that.’ she says. So Emilia does overtime without being paid. She also cannot join a union. ‘Once, a group of workers went on strike to ask for better wages and a transport and food allowance. All of them were sacked.’ But it doesn’t have to be like that From Africa to America, companies and consumers are changing. Following criticism of sweatshops (factories where workers work in terrible conditions for very low pay), there is increasing interest in ethical clothing – clothing which doesn’t exploit the workers who made it and recognises their rights like: Think English Pre-Intermediate • Unit 3 p.29 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE • a decent wage • paid holidays • the right to join a union • a clean and healthy working environment. British shoppers spent $50 million on ethical products in 2005. So it seems consumers are happy to spend more if their purchase is ethical and the profits are shared with the workers. ‘Ethical trading can actually make you more competitive and it is a growing sector,’ says an expert. Moliehi works in a factory in Lesotho, Southern Africa which makes ‘ethical’ shirts. Her working conditions are good and so she can send money home to her family. Fortunately Moliehi is not alone. More than 7,000 new jobs in Lesotho’s ethical clothing industry were created last year. The lead singer of U2, Bono, and his wife Ali Hewson recently started Edun, a ‘socially conscious clothing company’ with a factory in Lesotho. Edun uses organic cotton whenever possible (no chemicals which damage the environment are used in its production) and provides training and security for its workers. American Apparel is a t-shirt company based in Los Angeles. The US textile industry is in serious trouble with more than 50,000 workers unemployed. But American Apparel has sales figures of $80 million and can guarantee its workers’ rights as well as pay them $12 an hour, which is double the standard industry wage. These examples show that a different world is possible. Think English Pre-Intermediate • Unit 3 p.29 © Oxford University Press PHOTOCOPIABLE.