Want to ensure a fairer deal for fashion’s worst paid workers? We need to talk about collective bargaining.
This blog has been written by Rohan Preece and Shriya Srivastava. The visit was enabled by a partnership between SOAS University of London and Transform Trade.
When we met her in her village in North India last summer, Alia was working with her sister on tablecloths for Christmas.
Like other women homeworkers in her village, she only earns around Rs 200, about £2, for a day’s work. Their work is intricate and skilled, embroidering products that may also include branded fashion popular on UK high streets. It demands sitting for hours on end, even amidst a heatwave such as the one that unfolded across north India this summer, which saw temperatures exceed 50 degrees celsius. Because Alia and her sister work from their homes, they, like other homeworkers, rely on whatever they are able to provide by means of cooling equipment from within their household – an electric fan or a water-based cooling machine. When there is a power cut – as frequently happens – a handheld fan, or retiring into the shade, is their only means of escape from the heat.
For work they generally depend on one or more subcontractor who distributes pieces to complete and then, once ready, gives them to the contractor. In export-oriented supply chains such as the one Alia was working in when we met her, the contractor may have a direct relationship with the supplier completing the order for the buyer or may himself work through additional intermediaries.
Whilst the multi-tiered nature of the supply chains homeworkers work in contributes to their invisibility to buyers and leads to power dynamics that complicate efforts to negotiate fairer terms, this doesn’t stop Alia and others trying. We ask her if she is ever able to increase the piece-rates she receives from the sub-contractor. “Yes, we fight with him” she says, smiling, and simultaneously underlining that this is a task pursued collectively. “If we feel the price is not right for the piece.” The sub-contractor might then ask his contractor to increase his rate in order that he might be able to increase it for the homeworkers.
A homeworker in North India adds detail to a Christmas tablecloth produced for the export market. Photo credit: Md Meharban/Transform Trade
Alia can also discuss rates with her Aunt, Ghazala, who lives nearby. Ghazala is clear what’s at stake. “If we are being offered less than 30 rupees for an hour’s work”, she says, “We won't be able to feed anyone. So then we all bargain together. If the subcontractor thinks there is the option of increasing the rate, then they increase the price and if not they return it to their contractor.”
Ghazala, who has decades of experience in homeworking, has learnt to be firm. “Where did you get the confidence to ask them to take it back?”, we ask. “When you work hard you get the confidence”, she says. “Everyone works hard. If we won’t get the right price, how would we manage?” With work unpredictable, sometimes involving just 10-15 days a month, it’s crucial that homeworkers get a fair price for what they do.
A feature of homeworkers’ isolation and fragmentation is that they are often disconnected from their peers in a different part of the village who might be doing exactly the same work as they are. The fragmentation of homeworker communities often makes it harder for homebased workers to negotiate piece-rates, and easier for sub-contractors, who bring them work, to pay workers in one area less than those in another. Some homeworkers, however, are evolving ways of overcoming this challenge.
Seema, who lives in a different village, also works strategically with other homeworkers. Highly educated, she is more confident than many of her peers. “People here mostly do hand work and there are multiple contractors that give this work to the homebased workers”, she explains. “But there are some contractors that pay more than others do for the same work.” She goes on to describe how a few months previously, she discovered from her sister-in-law, who lives in a different locality, that she was being paid 50 rupees more for the same work. Whilst they were receiving 250 Rs for a piece, her sister-in-law was getting 300 Rs. Seema and others took immediate action.
“We told the women around us that you are working for these people and they are paying less but there is another contractor who is paying 50 rupees more. So you should work for him [we said], and they understood. We also scolded the contractor [who was paying less]. Why are you paying so much less?, we asked him. I can pay as much as I want, he said. We refused to work for him. We will work where we will get more profit; why should we work for anyone who pays us less?”
A group of women homeworkers sit together around a table in North India. Photo credit: Md Meharban/Transform Trade
Whilst on this occasion they took a stand against underpayment, on other occasions Seema and her fellow workers have been able to also secure better piece rates. “When we feel the rate is low”, she says, “then we all discuss it and raise our voice and the contractor listens to us then. This has happened with us many times, he listens to us and has also increased our money.” She is clear here that working together is key to the success of the negotiation. “They won't pay attention individually. Like in the neighbourhood, if there are four people are working together and they raise their voice together, then it will have more effect on the contractor. It won't affect them if people raise their voice alone.”
Unfortunately not all homeworkers are able to even begin to negotiate piece-rates. The scarcity of work for the women homeworkers amongst the migrant communities in Delhi’s slums and informal settlements means no option but to accept low rates. If they refuse, contractors will simply give the work to someone else who can do it for the same or even lower rates. This keeps piece rates extremely low, meaning wages for a day’s work are sometimes as low as 50 Rs a day, and sometimes only half of that, barely one tenth of the minimum wage.
Typically ignored in the audits that brands undertake of their supply chains, homeworkers do not generally know where their work goes or who they ultimately work for. Meanwhile, the opacity of supply chains - something that brands can overcome through a progressive approach to homeworking - enables employers to evade accountability for ensuring payments meet even the meagre minimum wage requirements of around £4 per day.
One strategy to enable homeworkers to become more visible to each other and to their employers is organising with the support of an established membership-based organisation. For more than 50 years, the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in India has been supporting informal women workers to achieve economic, social and legal rights. Today it is a trade union with approaching 3 million members across 18 states in India, include home-based workers, a significant share of whom work in apparel and textiles supply chains.
Organising informal women workers – bringing them together into collectives such as trade unions or cooperatives – has been integral to SEWA’s work over the decades. And in this SEWA is far from alone. In the past few years Anukatham, a trade union for homebased workers, has been established in Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu, with the support of SAVE. HomeNet South Asia, a network of which SEWA and SAVE are a part, represents around 1.2 million homebased workers across South Asia, whilst HomeNet International represents homebased workers from Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Southeast Asia.
Homebased workers, when united in membership of an organisation, can achieve remarkable things, including access to social protections from the government, securing the establishment of an ILO Convention on Home Work, as well as the dignity of recognition as workers at the community level and beyond. And as our experience with the recent EU-funded Hidden Homeworkers project showed, the networks fostered by unions such as SEWA Bharat and Anukatham can also enable piece-rates to sometimes be collectively and strategically negotiated and raised.
A close-up of a woman's hand embroidering beads in Uttar Pradesh, India. Photo Credit: Md Meharban/Transform Trade.
Whilst membership-based organisations such as SEWA and Anukatham are able to facilitate worker negotiation of piece-rates in different parts of India, it is striking that - even in the absence of the support of any worker organisation - women workers such as Alia and Seema are negotiating collectively with other homeworkers. In doing so, they are embodying the same principles of solidarity and collective voice that animate movements for homebased workers across the world. Their examples illustrate how basic expressions of freedom of association and collective bargaining are not something imposed on workers, nor an optional extra, but a facet of their ongoing struggle for fairer wages. The gains may be modest, but the struggle is nonetheless indispensable for women homeworkers, subject as they are to gendered power dynamics that leave them especially vulnerable to economic exploitation. Yet at the same time, we know from consultations with other homeworker communities in north India that many remain both isolated and unable to access networks of support and bargain for better rates.
In the wake of the launch of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and as the UK considers mandatory human rights due diligence for commercial organisations, the resilience and courage of these homeworkers serves as a timely reminder for businesses to ensure that all workers in their supply chain are able to voice their demands for better terms of work. This requires brands, at the outset, to commit to a homeworker policy, such as this one, that recognises homeworkers’ right to organise - incorporating the freedom of association and collective bargaining - and supports them to realise this right. For fashion’s worst paid and least visible workers, the expression of their collective voice, when translated into increased piece rates, can make a vital difference.