The T-SHIRT Project A Transparency Report: Meet the people who make our clothes. 2020 OPORAJEO NO SWEAT NO SWEAT This T-Shirt Fights Sweatshops! No Sweat is taking on the garment industry from the inside—building solidarity with garment workers and showing what ‘ethical’ really means. Our T-shirts and other garments don’t just offer an alternative to the sweatshops that produce apparel sold in Western shops, they actively challenge them. We believe passionately that we must end the exploitation of workers throughout the world by unscrupulous producers paying poverty wages to people who work in appalling conditions and enjoy few, if any, employment rights. And the only way to do that is through solidarity. We are making it our business to take on this industry directly in order to ensure that ‘ethical’ really means ‘ethical’—by championing the best practices, regulations, and wages that workers deserve. We have partnered with a worker-owned garment factory in Bangladesh which has demonstrated that change is possible and is setting new standards to provide an exciting model for future garment production. Through our partner we source T-shirts, hoodies and tote bags made by people who earn a living wage and have democratic control over their work. We use the profits to fund the fight against exploitation in the garment industry globally. This report tells the full story of what we affectionately refer to as ‘The T-shirt Project’. You will learn how our production partner, Oporajeo, was formed as a beacon of hope by survivors of the Rana Plaza disaster in Bangladesh and has overcome every hurdle to ensure they have a better life. We detail the progressive new conditions that our T-shirts and garments are produced in, the attempts that we and our partner make to minimize their environmental footprint—and how every T-shirt we sell helps fight the exploitation of sweatshop labour across the world. 2 CONTENTS The T-shirt Project 5 No Sweat and Oporajeo 6 How Our Project Works 7 SECTION 1 Garment Worker Solidarity Fund 8 THE T-SHIRT PROJECT Positive Environmental Impact 9 Oporajeo’s Working Conditions 10 COVID-19 Safety Measures 11 Oporajeo’s Wages and Benefits Package 12 No Sweat T-shirt Cost Breakdown 13 Oporajeo’s Workplace Democracy 13 Rising from the Rubble of Rana Plaza 14 SECTION 2 The Fire 15 THE STORY OF OPORAJEO Rising from the Ashes 15 COVID-19 Pandemic—Remobilising the Rana Plaza Rescue Team 16 Oporajeo Agro 17 SECTION 3 CHALLENGES IN PROMOTING Paying a Living Wage 18 When is a Co-op not a Co-op? 19 THE VOICE OF WORKERS Government Obstruction and Industry Reaction 20 SECTION 4 THE GARMENT INDUSTRY: Bangladesh’s Ready-Made Garment (RMG) Industry 21 Corporate Social Responsibility and Social Auditing 23 WHAT WE CAMPAIGN FOR A Visit to a Bangladeshi Sweatshop 26 THE FUTURE Solidarity with Garment Workers 27 3 4 SECTION 1 THE T-SHIRT PROJECT No Sweat has spent 20 years fighting sweatshop labour in solidarity with garment workers. Now we’ve taken the fight to the heart of the garment industry by creating our own brand of clothing that helps combat the exploitation of workers. In 2015, we reviewed the No Sweat campaign by looking at changes in fashion over the past decade. We concluded that there had been a seismic shift in the global fashion industry towards more ethical production. The notion of sweatshop labour had entered public consciousness and a growing number of brands were thinking about their impact on the environment. But scratching deeper, we realized things were not as good as they seemed. Ethical and environmental commitments by major brands are largely ‘greenwashing’ that increases sales by tapping into greater public consciousness while doing little to improve the lives of workers and to protect the environment. The rise of more genuinely ‘ethical’ brands has been a welcome change in the fashion landscape, offering an alternative to the major brands, but we found that most of the ethical labels were paying scant attention to workers’ rights and hardly ever mentioned trade unions. For this reason, we decided to develop a new way to put workers’ rights at the front and centre of ethical fashion—by launching our own No Sweat clothing label. Our mandate was twofold: • Source from workers’ co-operatives set up by former sweatshop workers as factories offering a new life to the people who had escaped the sweatshop nightmare. • Use the profits to fund garment workers’ unions and our campaign against sweatshop labour. In 2016, we formed the company No Sweat Ethical Trading Ltd, a separate entity from our campaign group, to oversee what we have fondly come to refer to as ‘the T-shirt project’. 5 NO SWEAT AND OPORAJEO In 2017, No Sweat came across a factory matching our mandate that could offer us T-shirts at a price that allowed us to compete in the ethical garment sector and showcase a new brand that puts workers’ rights and environmental concerns at the forefront. That factory was Oporajeo. Oporajeo is a worker-owned garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, many of whose original workers were survivors of the tragic 2013 Rana Plaza disaster that caused global outrage. That incident—in which an unsafe eight-storey garment factory that had been extended upwards without permits collapsed, killing 1,138 people—exposed the appalling conditions and exploitation that many sweatshop workers endure. No Sweat has been working hard to build the T-shirt project into a viable enterprise that can compete in the wholesale market. In 2020, after a successful crowdfunder campaign, we took the next step … a partnership with Oporajeo that would see us produce not just genuinely ethical T-shirts, but ones that have workers solidarity sewn into every stitch. 6 Founders of Oporajeo, 2013 No Sweat campaigns for workers rights, holding brands to account over exploitation. Profits from the T-shirts No Sweat supports and fund our campaign funds garment workers and garment worker’s trade unions around the struggles. world. Workers in this factory No Sweat T-shirts are made democratically control their in a worker-owned factory in work,ensure decent hours and Bangladesh set up by former conditions and earn a living wage. sweatshop workers. HOW OUR PROJECT WORKS No Sweat’s ethical T-shirts are about solidarity, and because • Solidarity Fund: 5% of the gross profit from every garment of that we operate differently to other T-shirt companies. We sold is being invested into a Solidarity Fund to support the have created a circular economy that sees former sweatshop struggles of garment workers around the globe. This fund workers make environmentally sound clothing that actively will be overseen by a committee comprising the No Sweat funds the fight against sweatshop labour. There are 5 key campaign group, No Sweat Ethical Trading, and Oporajeo, as ingredients that go into our T-shirt project: well as other partners from the labour movement. • Worker Protection: Oporajeo sets the cost of production, • No Sweat’s Campaigning: The remainder of No Sweat including the cost of materials and all the workers’ wages, Ethical Trading’s share of profits are donated to the No Sweat which No Sweat pays in full—so if our project is not campaign to support their work and top up the Solidarity successful the workers do not suffer any loss of earnings. Fund. There are no owners, shareholders or executives taking large chunks of the profits. • Profit Share: No Sweat and Oporajeo have a profit-sharing agreement, giving each organisation 50% of the net profits • Oporajeo’s Social Projects: The remainder of Oporajeo’s from the wholesale sales in the UK and Europe. This means share of the profits has a percentage paid out to the workers that Oporajeo has access to a larger share of the profits under its own workers’ profit-sharing agreement, and the rest from sales of our T-shirts than under a standard purchase is used to support various social projects that this workers’ agreement. initiative has launched (see below for more details). 7 GARMENT WORKER SOLIDARITY FUND Solidarity Not Charity The most important part of our T-shirt project is the Solidarity HOW DOES IT WORK? Fund it contributes to. From every blank T-shirt, hoodie or tote bag that we sell, 5% We can’t simply shop our way to social change, we have to gross profit is put into the Garment Worker Solidarity Fund. support the workers who face exploitation on the ground and The net profit is split equally between No Sweat Ethical stand in solidarity with their struggles. Trading Ltd and Oporajeo. We had no intention of simply creating a clothing company No Sweat Ethical Trading’s profits are donated to the No that shows off its ‘ethical’ credentials—this project is about Sweat campaign to fund its work fighting sweatshop labour building solidarity with garment workers movements’ and also tops up the Solidarty Fund in times of need. worldwide. Applications for support from the fund are assessed by the We created the Garment Worker Solidarity Fund so that we No Sweat campaign following dialogue with No Sweat Ethical can use the profits to help garment workers around the world Trading Ltd, Oporajeo, and other partners from the labour fight against exploitation. movement. All workers need a union, so that they can stand united The Garment Worker Solidarity Fund is used to support and collectively bargain for a fair share of the wealth they workers fighting for their rights, particularly when on strike. help create. This is nowhere more true than in the garment industry where workers are forced to work for low wages in Strike funds are vital to workers’ collective success as it allows poor conditions while large corporations earn multi-million them to take industrial action and continue to provide for their dollar profits and the trickling down of this wealth stops at families.