One year after the Rana Plaza factory building in Bangladesh collapsed in 2013, in which more than 1,130 people died, the government, business and civil society in Germany launched the Textile Partnership. Their goal: to improve working conditions in factories in the Global South. Where our clothing is sewn. But now the campaign for clean clothes is leaving the textile alliance and giving it a bad report: It “cannot prove any improvement in working conditions in the global clothing supply chains”.
This is a hard blow for the alliance, because the civil society pioneer is campaigning for the improvement of working conditions in the textile industry. 30 civil society, church and trade union actors support the campaign in Germany, which in turn is part of the international Clean Cloth Campaign.
At the end of 2021, two church development organizations had already left the textile alliance, citing a lack of success. But some companies have recently gone, including Trigema. The voluntary association still has 124 members, including 70 companies such as Adidas, Aldi, H&M and KiK, 15 associations and 20 civil society organizations. Does the Textile Partnership have a future at all? Some things are likely to depend on the closed conference at the beginning of April, when the course is to be set anew.
Only twelve companies took part in an initiative on wages
The sticking point for the campaign for her exit is the “far too low wages” in the sewing factories. Different purchasing practices of the companies are necessary – they have to pay the producers higher prices so that they can pay their employees living wages. The alliance has been dedicated to the topic for years, but “without measurable results”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/wirtschaft/.”Too many member companies use every conceivable excuse to evade responsibility, says Waltraud Waidelich, Member of the board of the campaign Only twelve out of 70 companies took part in an alliance initiative for better wages.
Jürgen Janssen, head of the secretariat of the Textile Partnership, defends the course taken: The members and the Textile Partnership as a whole continue to focus on higher wages and “are approaching this very complex topic with concrete steps”.
However, there are also different interests between the companies involved. Some tried to improve working conditions in factories on their own long before the Textiles Partnership was founded. They have experience and have higher goals than companies that have only been involved in this since they joined the Textiles Partnership. According to one company, reconciling the two groups is almost impossible. The alliance is actually only suitable for “newcomers,” explains another company. Gisela Burkhardt from the organization Femnet, which heads the steering committee of the 20 remaining non-governmental organizations, also sees such difficulties: “There are a few companies in the textile alliance that want to work constructively and make a difference themselves – but they are in the minority.” However, the different “ambition levels of the companies” are not visible to the outside world, because the Textiles Partnership also lacks an evaluation scheme in its review process of the companies. One cannot recognize “pioneers and laggards” at first glance.
However, such transparency would distinguish committed companies and at the same time be an incentive for others. This is why these organizations in the Textile Partnership are calling for an evaluation grid based on guidelines and targets to make clear the level of ambition and progress made by companies on each of the eleven risk topics in the textile sector, such as living wages. Business associations are also pushing for a change in the review process, but for different reasons. “In its current form, it means an enormous amount of capacity for companies and provides hardly any measurable added value,” according to the Association of the German Textile and Fashion Industry.
The Clean Clothes Campaign, on the other hand, fears a further watering down of requirements for members. “We lack confidence in an alliance in which the corporate lobby is constantly slowing down, while the living conditions of people in the supply chains have deteriorated dramatically again, especially during the corona pandemic,” says campaign coordinator Isabell Ullrich. However, the framework conditions have also changed since the Textiles Partnership was founded. From next year, a supply chain law will apply in Germany and such a law is being negotiated in the EU. This means that companies must assume binding responsibility for complying with human rights due diligence obligations in their supply chains, and the question arises as to what additional value voluntary initiatives such as the Textiles Partnership can provide.