Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), an Asian labour-led global labour and social alliance, has been monitoring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on workers in garment-producing countries through ground reports from AFWA partners and allies in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and detailed tracking of local and national news media sources. These perspectives of global south workers and unions are presented in the series, “The Emperor Has No Clothes.”
The first issue of the series ‘The Emperor Has No Clothes: Garment Supply Chain in the Time of Pandemic’ looks at how the COVID-19 epidemic has affected garment workers in four major textile and apparel production countries in Asia, namely Cambodia, India, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The report lays special emphasis on the impact of the pandemic and institutional responses in four dimensions, viz. wage disbursal, social security, migration, and healthcare.
The second issueof the “Emperor Has No Clothes” lays special emphasis on the issues around wage payment, support mechanisms and layoffs of garment workers, specifically in Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Most importantly, the report presents a typology of discriminatory practices in the labour market that account for the immediate impact of the pandemic on garment workers in terms of access to employment. These are built on existing social inequalities related to age, gender, religion, nature of employment, and wage levels, and generate new forms of discrimination based on spatial proximity to factories, and accentuate union-busting tactics that are direct or subtle, with or without the support of the State.
The third issue of “Emperor Has No Clothes” highlights the challenges that suppliers, in particular, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) face due to the Covid-19 lockdown measures and reduced business activities, and how these challenges translate into increased risk and burden of liability for garment workers. This issue brings together discussions on the impact of, and response to, COVID-19 by suppliers and garment unions. The report not only makes a case for brands to ensure greater responsibility and accountability but also argues that any COVID-19 recovery program by governments in garment-producing countries needs to invest heavily in supporting ‘at-risk populations’ like garment workers who are experiencing a high degree of socio-economic marginalization, while at the same time supporting MSMEs that form the backbone of economies in the Global South.
