Segura & Unchosen eradicating modern day slavery from fashion industry

  • Written by Peter Needle
  • Published on 7 February 2014
  • Blogs PR

We’re all becoming painfully aware of the ethical flaws embedded in the global garment industry, as sweatshops and hazardous factories regularly hit the headlines.

We’re all becoming painfully aware of the ethical flaws embedded in the global garment industry, as sweatshops and hazardous factories regularly hit the headlines. Britain is witnessing a rise in the popularity of local fashion production, and Segura’s charity partner Unchosen is keen to tackle ethical issues remaining in the UK garment industry.

Demand is growing for products ‘Made in England’, due to connotations of quality, and our recent article on fast fashion showed that more and more companies are utilizing localised supply chains for practical reasons. Many UK retailers, including John Lewis and Marks & Spencer, have declared plans to ‘reshore’ some of their garment manufacturing, with ASOS even launching its own Stitching Academy in London to develop skillsets for future UK manufacturing. So how can we ensure that ethical practices will prevail in the garment industry at home?

Dispatches Documentary

Trish Davidson founded Unchosen in 2008, with a mission to educate communities on all forms of human trafficking existing in the UK and Ireland, including sexual exploitation, domestic servitude and forced labour. The charity spreads its message through the use of films, which promote accessibility and emotional engagement with the complex realities of modern slavery in a more direct way than written reports. Working with NGOs and organisations to collect case studies, Unchosen proves that trafficking and modern slavery is a very real issue affecting thousands of people in the UK and Ireland every day.

Unchosen’s Manchester exhibition 'Cotton: Global Threads' studied the issue of slavery and unfair labour in the garment industry, both abroad and at home in Britain. The exhibition included Channel 4 Dispatches Documentary ‘Fashion's Dirty Secret’, in which undercover reporters filmed garment manufacturing workshops in Leicester.  Workers were paid under minimum wage, pressured to work at speed in cramped and overheated conditions, and reportedly hired without identity checks. This workshop was found to provide stock to several UK retail giants. A subcontractor was found to have breached codes of conduct, but the proof remained that unethical sweatshop conditions can exist far closer to home than Bangladesh.

Fashion Retailers Starting to Cotton On

Davidson contends that there is significant public demand for fashion brands to assume accountability for their supply chains. “Nevertheless, modern day slavery continues around the world,” Trish explains, “and global sourcing can make it very difficult for garment retailers to ensure that their products reach a high ethical standard.”

“For instance, Uzbekistan uses state-sponsored forced labour to harvest its cotton crop, the export of which is worth around US$1 billion every year. In protest to the use of forced labour, many UK brands have signed a pledge to not knowingly source cotton from Uzbekistan, whilst Marks & Spencer have banned Uzbek cotton from their products completely. However, Uzbekistan ships much of the country’s cotton to Bangladesh and India, where the product’s origin could potentially be camouflaged.”

Luckily for retailers, supply chain management technology can help ensure ethical transparency. Segura ensures that no unauthorized sub-contracting can be carried out without the retailer’s knowledge, so that every detail of a garment is guaranteed to match set ethical specifications.

Working Together

Segura’s Managing Director, Peter Needle, states, “we are very proud to have Unchosen as a charitable partner. We share many aligned objectives, and both believe that transparent supply chain solutions are key to ethical fashion production. We both recognise that it is difficult for retailers to know whether every item in each product has been ethically sourced. However, by using Segura’s Order Manager System, and with robust audit regimes in place, a retailer can be confident that they are doing all they can to eradicate unethical components from their supply chain."

Unchosen’s latest short film competition launches on 26th February, and will focus on forced labour. Working with NGOs and researchers, the films will explore how everyday products - the smartphone in our pocket, our high street jeans - are the result of modern slavery. These films use case studies to show how slavery is happening here in the UK and Ireland - in factories, fashion and food.

“But it’s not all bad news,” Davidson maintains, “we want our films to bring people together to understand how we can make a difference and what we can do to challenge modern slavery, by empowering people to make change.”

If you are interested in learning more about Unchosen, please visit their website here.

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