The neoliberal fashion trend: sweatshops in Europe and in Latin America

MONTERO, JERÓNIMO

Manchester

Workshop; 1st Human Geography Journal Graduate Forum; 2009

Institute for Human Geography Inc. + Manchester University

Over the last thirty years the clothing industry has experienced major changes. In several locations, a return to the widespread use of the sweating system can be witnessed; in some others, the latter has indeed emerged. These changes in the spatial organisation of the industry reveal changes in the power relationships within it (Massey, 1985). Indeed, it can be noted that among the main results of these dominant trends, working conditions have worsened nearly all around the world. This research aims at analysing the changes that the fashion industry has undergone during the last three decades and it’s consequences over working conditions. Two case studies are addressed: one in Buenos Aires and another one in Prato (Tuscany). In both cities, thousands of migrant workers live and work for up to 18 hours a day in small inner-city workshops for an extremely low pay. The reality on these locations suggests that informal economy, human trafficking, child labour and “new slavery” are counterparts of the glamorous clothing businesses. Numerous industrial and social changes since the late seventies converged to give rise to the sweating system. Capital logics, but also gender and ethnic issues, lay at the centre of the explanations (Morokvasic, 1987). On the one hand, given the constantly changing nature of fashion, the production of women’s fashionwear (the most dynamic stripe of the market) requires a high level of flexibility and proximity to the markets, which undermine the benefits of factory production and outsourcing in developing countries. Companies have instead relied on small inner-city workshops, largely run by migrants. On these, gender inequalities and the vulnerable situation of migrant labour ease the mechanisms of over-exploitation to which these workers are subjected. By the same token, the availability of this sweating system (a virtual “labour army reserve”) has empowered businesses, resulting in wages cuts for factory workers. These thousands of unregistered workshops are constrained to accept low prices and small and unstable orders to survive to competition among them, in an endless run to the bottom. These petty entrepreneurs and their workers shoulder the risks of the investments of large retailers and branded manufacturers. Besides, the resulting redistribution of value within the chain determines that the unit profit of the brands can reach a hundred times that of the worker. The role played by national states in both places has allowed these trends to consolidate. In both Argentina and Italy, the facts suggest that the emergence of the sweating system responds more to an active than to a passive role of the state in the regulation of the economy. While in Buenos Aires the homework legislation failed to be enforced (including the dissolution of the ad hoc agency), in Italy the changes in labour legislation (mostly in the regulation of subcontracting practices) have been critical. A number of policy-making and other political suggestions arise from this research. On the one hand, public administrators must take immediate action to improve the legal framework in favour to the weaker actors in the industry, and to enforce it. On the other hand, while consumers’ campaigns are surely welcomed, workers’ organisation is even more central to put an end to sweatshops. Most importantly, any thorough and long term changes must be based on the consideration of garments as nothing less than a human need.