Factories in Ethiopia making clothes for top global brands are paying their workers far less than counterparts in other low-paying countries, according to a report by New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights released this week.
According to the report, the Ethiopian government assured suppliers and buyers that workers there would happily work for the equivalent of $26 (€23) a month.
"In their eagerness to create a 'Made in Ethiopia' brand, the government, global brands, and foreign manufacturers failed to anticipate that the base wage was simply too little for workers to live on," said Paul Barrett, who authored the report. Ethiopia has no official minimum wage for the private sector.
Ethiopian factory workers produce apparel for top fashion labels such as H&M, Tommy Hilfiger, JC Penney and Calvin Klein. Their counterparts in Kenya earn a higher wage: $207 a month, and those in China $326.
The report, "Made in Ethiopia: Challenges in the Garment Industry's New Frontier," claimed the low monthly wage paid to garment workers in Ethiopia does not cover their basic needs. Even after additional payments of attendance bonuses and expenses for food and transportation, most workers struggle to get by.
Read more: Ethiopia: East Africa's new economic power
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The cost of cheap clothes
From rags to riches
The idea of farming seems today more abstract than ever before. Jost Franko's latest photo essay brings this distant world back to our reality, in which the ridiculous price of garments is paid by workers living in dire conditions. Pictured here is a relative of Issa Gira (67) from Burkina Faso, who's been growing cotton for 30 years, but still earns less than a dollar a day.
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The cost of cheap clothes
Weight control
After the crop is harvested, farmers just like these two in Burkina Faso have to bring the cotton to the collection centers in nearby villages. Just before the market day, farmers help each other press the cotton into a huge, hard mass so they're able to weigh their loads. "No one really cares about farming, the first part of the supply chain," says Franko.
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The cost of cheap clothes
The golden lining
Cotton farming gives work to more than four million people in Burkina Faso, and it is its second-most-valuable resource after gold. Sofitex is one of the three companies in the country that buys cotton from farmers and provides loans to cultivators, and it exports around 540,000 tons of cotton annually. Local farmers are seen here loading cotton into one of the many Sofitex containers.
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The cost of cheap clothes
Work-life imbalance
"Due to western cotton subsidies, which are creating a dumping effect, poor countries are in a huge loss," says Franko. In his opinion, the production of cotton and garments in third-world countries is just another form of colonialism. "Small workshops sometimes take subcontracted work for larger companies. The rent is expensive for most workers, so they sleep in the factories," he adds.
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The cost of cheap clothes
A princess' dress or a cushion?
In this photo, garment workers cut the textile in a factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the heart of the global cheap clothing industry. They earn 2.20 euros ($2.36) a day on average. Companies like H&M, Walt Disney or Lidl have their garments and home textile lines produced in the Dhaka region, which made the headlines in 2013 when the Rana Plaza sweatshop building collapsed, killing 1,129 workers.
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The cost of cheap clothes
The other side of the EU
"It's hard to talk about fair conditions even when it comes to expensive, high-fashion labels," Franko claims, describing this photo of Romanian garment workers. "The state of the garment factories in Romania is much better compared to most Asian and African countries, but wages are still extremely low, not exceeding 200 euros a month, which is worse than in China. And this is the EU!"
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The cost of cheap clothes
Last season's styles
Although the fashion industry has been stagnating trend-wise recently, which has made more styles trans-seasonal, more than 80 billion pieces of clothing are purchased every year worldwide. But the low quality and purchase cost make the clothes disposable. In the US alone, more than 15 million tons of used textile waste is generated annually.
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The cost of cheap clothes
Get the London look
"The history of cotton is indeed a dark one, and in my eyes, the issues surrounding the cotton trade have never ended," states Franko. Although much has been written and spoken about the invisible and destructive line of the clothing industry, customers seem to be immune: "I guess it's easier to turn a blind eye to it. Those issues are structural, and don't have to do only with garments."
Author: Jan Tomes
Little training, cultural conflicts
The situation on the ground is at variance to the one claimed by Ethiopian authorities. Suppliers have encountered employees who are "increasingly willing to protest by stopping work or even quitting," the report claims.
The report focused on the 25,000 workers at Hawassa Industrial Park, one of five manufacturing hubs inaugurated by the Ethiopian government since 2014. Built with Chinese help, the park has modern halls where leather and textile products are produced for the European and American market. There are plans to increase the workforce to 60,000.
Many young women working at the sites receive very little training and face cultural conflicts with managers from south or east Asia.
As a result of the dissatisfaction among the workforce, factories replaced all of their workers every 12 months on average, pushing training costs up and efficiency down.
Read more: Low wages draw international textile companies to Ethiopia
Clothing giant H&M is one of the companies producing its garments in Ethiopia
Set a minimum wage
One manufacturer cited in the report suggested: "A minimum wage would stabilize everything."
The report concluded that factories would be more cost-effective by implementing a series of improvements, including:
- providing workers' dormitories with subsidized rent
- promoting more employees more quickly into middle management jobs
- fostering workers' councils that provide a real voice for workers
- establishing a forum for grievances.
Ethiopia is Africa's second-most populous country, with about 105 million people who still largely survive off agriculture. Plans to increase clothing exports from the current $145 million to $30 billion are "seemingly unrealistic," according to the report.
The Stern Center report recommended setting a minimum wage and developing a long-term economic plan to strengthen the apparel industry.
Hawassa Industrial Park, the largest specialized apparel and textile park in Africa, was built in just nine months
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