Despite efforts by a small but growing group of European fashion brands and retailers to tackle exploitation of Syrian refugees in Turkish garment supply chains, the majority are still failing to take steps to prevent abuse, particularly beyond their first-tier suppliers, new research suggests.
Numerous reports have documented the poor working conditions Syrian refugees endure in Turkey including, discriminatory wages far below the legal minimum, child labour, sexual harassment and other abuse.
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But new research has found brands’ own purchasing practices are increasing the risk of labour abuse, by driving down wages, creating precarious work, and penalising factories that don’t meet unrealistic turnaround times.
The latest investigation by the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre is based on in-depth interviews with five Turkish tier-one suppliers to European clothing brands about the pressure they are under to meet demand.
And without systemic action by European clothing brands to tackle these motors of mistreatment, harm will grow, and the mendacity of social audits that conceal abuse in supply chains will continue, according to the resulting report: ‘The Price You Pay: How Purchasing Practices Harm Turkey’s Garment Workers.’
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By GlobalDataSince the Syrian civil war started in 2011, more than 3.6m Syrians have escaped to Turkey – with an estimated 650,000 working in the country’s garment industry. Most are undocumented workers in the lower tiers of the supply chain and therefore particularly vulnerable to abuse and exploitation.
Thanks in part to this huge supply of cheap labour, the Turkish garment industry is booming. It’s the third largest clothing supplier to the EU and is expecting to grow its exports by 10% in 2019.
The emergence of online brands and increasing emphasis on speed to market – with turnaround times as fast as four weeks – to meet fast-changing consumer trends means Turkey will continue to retain strategic importance with both established and emerging European brands, given its close proximity to the European market.
While the role of fashion brands’ purchasing practices in creating incentives for exploitation is well documented, the new research provides insight into the type of practices that are creating conditions for exploitation of Syrian refugees and other garment workers in Turkey.
Among the key findings:
- Short-term relationships drive precarious employment and excessive overtime: Suppliers report a striking lack of long-term relationships with brands, according to the research, with most only having visibility on orders for the next two to three months, despite brands often sourcing from them for years. Suppliers cannot plan effectively, leaving workers vulnerable to short-term contracts and casual work, combined with long periods of overtime when large orders arrive.
- Price pressures drive down workers’ wages: Suppliers say constant pressure by brands to reduce price undermines their ability to offer decent working conditions. One supplier admitted accepting orders below cost and others remarked that this practice was common in the industry. Most interviewees said brands had failed to factor the 2019 26% national minimum wage hike into their pricing.
- Unrealistic turnaround times drives work to unscrupulous sub-contractors: Suppliers reported having to agree to unachievable turnaround times to secure orders; to try and meet these deadlines they subcontract work to smaller factories, require excessive overtime, and use high numbers of casual workers for short periods. In these conditions, second and third tier producers are usually excluded from social auditing to meet brands’ human rights compliance standards.
- Financial penalties further undermine supplier profits: A number of suppliers have to accept penalties for delays as part of the normal course of their relationship with brands, even when such delays are due to unrealistic turnaround times.
These practices drive unrealistic cost-cutting and heightened business risk, the report says, and have created the conditions for exploitation of vulnerable workers – who are disproportionately women, Syrian refugees and migrants – in the lower tiers of the supply chain in Turkey. It is these groups, and Turkish casual workers, who do not have the ability to unionise and collectively bargain.
These are the practices that need to be reformed in order for workers, especially refugees, to fully realise the benefits of positive efforts that have been introduced so far, including integration programmes and enhanced due diligence commitments.
Recommendations
Key among the report’s recommendations is that brands need to radically reform their purchasing practices – which will require a huge cultural shift – as well as seek ways to understand the impact of their business decisions on both suppliers and the workers they employ.
Even brands that are known to have strong CSR programmes were named by suppliers as having very aggressive purchasing practices, including ordering “for unreasonable prices” and imposing penalties for even slight delays in delivery.
There is also a disconnect between CSR and buying departments, with the purchasing departments having to get confirmation from the sustainability department – “but mostly, the buyers have the last say.”
To address these purchasing issues, brands should:
- Commit to fully factor the 2019 minimum wage increase and all future minimum wage increases into the prices they pay to suppliers.
- Develop purchasing practices policies that:
– Commit the company to ring-fencing labour costs, in order to guarantee living wages in price negotiations;
– Create coherence between their CSR and buying departments, and embed this within all departments and procedures, in order to combat the culture of price trumping worker rights and protections;
– Create strong incentives for buyers to foster longer-term relationships with suppliers, which will help guarantee secure work and worker protections;
– Commit brand buyers to understand the capacity production of factories in order to negotiate fair lead times and payment terms.
– Provide training for their buying and commercial departments on rights-respecting purchasing practices, so that they understand the impacts of their decisions on suppliers and workers.
– Collaborate with other brands sourcing from Turkey to improve purchasing practices on an industry-wide basis. All brands sourcing from Turkey should join and support the Action, Collaboration, and Transformation (ACT) on Living Wages initiative operating in Turkey, for example, which is seeking to create sectoral collective bargaining through improved purchasing practices.
– Report publicly on how they are reforming their purchasing practices to drive better social performance by factories and specifically how practices support efforts to achieve living wages of workers making their clothes. The Better Buying Initiative has a rating system that can serve as a tool and guidance for brands to improve, and for suppliers to be better supported.
This is not the first time that concerns have been raised over the exploitation of Syrian refugees working in the Turkish textile industry. The Turkish government and the clothing supply chain have been repeatedly urged to work together to improve their plight, with guidance issued in English, Arabic and Turkish to help brands and producers to understand, respond, identify and preventing abuses.
And last year a commitment was made between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Istanbul Apparel Exporters’ Association (IHKIB) to create formal and decent work for Syrian refugees in Turkey’s garment industry.
