It is the responsibility of the big fashion brands, who prosper with very high margins, to make sure that workers in their supply chains can earn a decent living, without compromising their health or that of their children. IndustriAll Europe will engage in a strategic action in the south-east European region to make sure that the situation revealed by the CCC soon fades into history.

The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) published a new report yesterday, called “Europe’s sweat shops”, on the appalling situation of garment and footwear workers in eastern and south-eastern Europe. Poverty wages, below the official minimum wage and at a fraction of a living wage, forced overtime, unacceptable working conditions, sexual harassment of a mainly female, vulnerable workforce, are commonplace in all countries surveyed, in the EU eastern neighbourhood and candidate countries (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Macedonia, Moldova, Serbia, Turkey, Ukraine), but also in the European Union itself (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia). In all these countries, workers supply the global fashion brands, many of which European, and trendy high street shops. The contrast between the sordid conditions of production and the glamour of the catwalk, a few hundred kilometers apart, could not be starker.

This report was published during a conference organised by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in Berlin, in which Luc Triangle, General Secretary, announced the 2-year strategic project that industriAll European trade union will start in December 2017 to improve the situation of garment and footwear workers in the south-east European region (Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia).

The project, financially supported by the European Commission, will focus on mapping the supply chains of global fashion brands in these countries, training local workers and trade unionists on collective bargaining processes, building strategic coalitions between local civil society organisations and industriAll Europe’s affiliated trade unions, and developing game-changing campaigns and strategies, in order to improve the situation of workers in the Garment and Footwear sector. Close cooperation with the sister organisation, IndustriALL Global Union, is envisaged, based on existing tools and agreements that they developed.

“It is unacceptable that workers in Europe must toil under such appalling wage and working conditions”, stated Luc Triangle. “It is the responsibility of the big fashion brands, who prosper with very high margins, to make sure that workers in their supply chains can earn a decent living, without compromising their health or that of their children. IndustriAll Europe will engage in a strategic action in the south-east European region to make sure that the situation revealed by the CCC soon fades into history.”