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Global garment workers’ health and safety brings international experts to Sussex

New approaches to health and safety that focus less on corporate self-regulation and more on legally binding contracts may offer better outcomes for garment workers, say a group of international scholars who met at the University of Sussex last week.

Garment workers in BangkokGarment workers often face low wages, poor working conditions, long hours and adverse health effects.

Garment workersAn international symposium at Sussex in June 2014 focused on how to understand and address the persistently poor working conditions of garment workers around the world.

Risks of injury, ill health and even death remain rampant across the garment factories of the global South, despite more than 30 years of corporate self-regulation via ethical standards and certifications. 

An international symposium, ‘Accounting for “Health” and “Safety” in the Global Garment Industry,’ held in the School of Global Studies on June 26-27, focused on how to understand and address the persistently poor working conditions of garment workers around the world. 

The event, organised by the Department of Anthropology, brought together 24 social anthropologists, geographers, sociologists, labour scholars, management scholars, students and practitioners to discuss labour conditions in the global garment sector. Delegates came from a number of countries, including Bangladesh, France, the Netherlands and the United States. 

There was a consensus among scholars attending the event that corporate self-regulation via voluntary ‘codes of conduct’ has failed to protect garment workers, who often face low wages, poor working conditions, long hours and adverse health effects. Many campaigns designed to educate consumers to shop ‘ethically’ have also fallen short. 

But new global agreements, such as the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (2013), may offer some hope for improving working conditions by making fashion brands legally accountable for the safety of workers in the factories from which they source garments. 

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh was created in the wake of last year’s collapse of Rana Plaza, a garment factory building in Dhaka, which led to the death of more than 1,100 workers. Although the Accord has now been signed by 160 fashion companies and is supported by two global trade unions, several NGOs and the International Labour Organization (ILO), questions still remain about how the Accord will be implemented, and whether it adequately protects workers’ rights, such as freedom of association. 

The symposium also aimed to reconceptualise ‘health’ and ‘safety’ beyond building safety, drawing attention to the global outsourcing regimes that are the root cause of many forms of ill health for workers. 

The event was funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, which promotes and supports anthropological research. 

Dr Rebecca Prentice, Lecturer in Anthropology, who co-organised the event at Sussex with Dr Geert De Neve, said: “With the support of the Wenner Gren Foundation, we have been able to tap the expertise of anthropologists who have a fine-grained understanding of the lived experience of garment workers around the world.

“But this has been a truly multidisciplinary event, highlighting that the issue of workers’ health and safety requires the expertise of scholars and practitioners working in various disciplines.” 

The organisers plan to publish an edited volume of papers presented at the event, and to conduct further research on these themes in South Asia and the Caribbean.