By Meghan McLane (MS ’23)

Since 2017, an estimated one to two million Uyghurs have been separated from their families and held in internment camps by the Chinese Communist Party in the Xinjiang region of northwestern China. 

In these camps, Uyghurs, a Muslim minority, are subjected to political indoctrination, rape, involuntary sterilization, and forced labor as an attempt to eradicate their culture and drive assimilation into the dominant Han Chinese lifestyle.

The genocide in Xinjiang rightly elicited a strong rebuke from the U.S. government. In 2021, President Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law, banning the import of any goods from the region. 

U.S. apparel retailers scrambled to map their cotton sources in hopes of proving forced labor was not in their supply chains — since Xinjiang produces 85% of China’s cotton — but many found opaque supplier networks and unreliable documentation, and they pivoted to pulling production out of China almost entirely.

The response from the government and businesses was swift and unified. It showed action on these issues can happen, so why doesn’t it happen more often? Why is it that these one to two million Uyghurs demanded attention, but the 60 million workers in global apparel supply chains, many of whose working conditions also constitute forced labor, continue to be neglected? 

The International Labour Organization defines forced labor as any work or service performed involuntarily under the threat of penalty. Abuse of vulnerability, intimidation and threats, withholding wages, excessive overtime, physical and sexual violence, and debt bondage are some of the key indicators. 

In the 1970s, U.S. retailers moved manufacturing to developing countries, primarily in pursuit of cheaper labor, and the expansive global supply chains of today began to take shape. Over the last 50-plus years of this outsourcing model, brands lost visibility and accountability to the practices used to create their products. When labor abuses surfaced, they had room to deny direct knowledge or responsibility. 

One of the most memorable examples is the accusation against Nike in 1991 of using sweatshops in Indonesia. Ultimately this led to sweeping industry reforms and the implementation of supplier codes of conduct as a standard requirement, but it still did not solve the problem. 

Injustices continued to occur, and brands continued to shirk responsibility. Occasionally, a story so horrific reached mainstream media, like the Rana Plaza factory collapse in 2013 that killed over a thousand garment workers in Bangladesh, or the sudden cancellation of orders during the coronavirus pandemic that pushed millions of garment workers into further economic instability. 

The Clean Clothes Campaign reports garment workers in factories contracted by major U.S. retailers across Southeast Asia, Latin America, and China being paid poverty wages that require working excessive hours to earn overtime or bonuses just to survive. 

More research corroborates this, showing no major retailer from luxury to sportswear can confirm that all workers in their supply chains earn a living wage. Disappointingly, virtually none have public commitments to address this either. 

If even luxury brands — selling products at a much higher price point — are not paying living wages, this challenges the idea that fast fashion is to blame. Even Patagonia, a beacon of responsible sourcing, reports only 39% of its factory partners are paying a living wage. The system seems to be designed to suppress wages, regardless of category. Luxury brands have no excuse, but even mass market or fast fashion brands could easily pay living wages by reducing wasteful overproduction with more efficient inventory management and reallocating that money to workers.  

It’s important to distinguish a living wage from a minimum wage. A minimum wage, in countries where it exists as a legal standard, does not always mean it is enough to cover basic expenses. A minimum wage could be a poverty wage, and poverty wages lead to countless hardships like poor housing or living far from loved ones, food insecurity, inadequate access to healthcare, dangerous workplace conditions, sleep deprivation, violence, and so on.

Historically, brands have argued that they do not own the factories and therefore cannot control the operations. Another common counter is to frame garment workers’ conditions in terms of economic alternatives. 

As Nicholas Kristof noted in the New York Times after a trip to Cambodia in 2004, working six or seven days in a garment factory for $2 a day is better than picking through trash in the city landfill for 79 cents a day. Similarly, a bad job is better than no job — if U.S. imports are held to a higher labor standard than developing countries can achieve, production will move out of the region entirely and workers will be left with nothing. 

But both counterarguments are misguided. First, business practices have direct impacts on factory operations. The pressure to meet brand’s demands of ever lower prices and faster lead times, paired with the volatility of orders, push factory owners to make cuts to stay competitive. 

Second, poverty versus complete destitution is not the only choice. The relationship between brands and suppliers needs to transform from extractive to reciprocal. 

A 2013 journal article on addressing the root causes of labor violations in international subcontracting networks points to the concept of ‘joint responsibility’ as the answer. Using the agreements between workers, suppliers, and buyers in New York’s garment district in the early 20th century as a case study, it shows the benefits of supply chain transparency, establishing long-term contracts between buyers and suppliers to create more stability for workers, and holding buyers ultimately liable for working with contractors that pay workers a living wage. 

While the landscape has changed quite a bit from the early 20th century, joint responsibility can still be applied today. The U.S. is beginning to move back in this direction with the recent passage of California’s Garment Worker Protection Act, and the proposal of the FABRIC Act. Both aim to provide protections for domestic apparel workers, such as eliminating pay based on individual units produced and building better transparency through supplier registration requirements. 

This past June, when the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act took effect, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo released a statement saying, “Protecting global human rights is central to our values as Americans.” 

It’s easy to uphold this responsibility for a situation that U.S. businesses were not involved in creating, and much harder to confront in situations that U.S. businesses were. But it’s time to do the hard thing. 

Meghan McLane (MS ’23) is studying sustainability management and currently works in the fashion industry.