Press Release: ‘Raise the wages!’ demand Pakistani trade unionists and labour campaigners
For immediate release: Friday 25th September 2026
“Raise the wages!” demand Pakistani trade unionists and labour rights campaigners as they flood Oxford Street to mark Living Wage Day
- Activists call on brands to immediately address the longstanding issue of low pay in the garment industry, citing Primark, Zara, Next and H&M’s healthy profits.
- Visiting organisers from Pakistan’s Homebased Women Workers’ Federation, the National Trade Union Federation and Labour Education Foundation took part in a protest tour of the flagship Oxford Street stores of the brands, calling out poverty pay and labour rights abuses within their suppliers in Pakistan.
- The action, organised by Labour Behind the Label, was to mark 25th September, International Living Wage Day and the updated Fashion Checker, the go-to resource to check whether fashion brands and upholding their commitments to living wage (spoiler alert: they’re not)
Protestors gathered at Soho Square before marching down Oxford Street to confront brands and shoppers with the stark reality of garment worker poverty.
A recent study by Labour Behind the Label and partners in Pakistan found that 65% of workers interviewed across 8 key supplier factories in Pakistan were not paid what they were legally owed. 71% reported that their salary was not sufficient to meet their basic needs.
The updated Fashion Checker database, run by the Clean Clothes Campaign, shows that only 32% of 110 brands have made a living wage commitment and a meagre 4% have reported tangible progress on this.
The Oxford Street protest linked poverty wages abroad with attacks on workers rights and conditions in the UK, whilst also highlighting the role a living wage could play in mitigating fashion’s climate impact.
Nasir Mansoor, General Secretary of the National Trade Union Federation of Pakistan said: “A living wage is a right, not a privilege. Are global brands so weak that they make living wage pledges but are unable to keep them? Or is the reality that the money is there, but only goes in the pockets of shareholders. Garment workers deserve a wage they can live on with dignity. Our workers build their profits. It’s time for justice.”
Anna Bryher, Policy Lead at Labour Behind the Label, said: “Brands’ continued refusal to take wages seriously is infuriating because we all see through the smokescreen. While profits and revenue grow, and more and more cheap clothing is pumped out to flood our high street, the workers making the garments are still not guaranteed a decent wage. Try as they might, brands can’t convince us to accept this rotten ‘business as usual’ model. There is no place for exploitation on our streets. Enough is enough, time to raise the wages.”
Fashion Checker data on all the brands targetted by last night’s action shows no evidence of living wages paid anywhere in their supply chains, while Next is the only one of the four with no explicit commitment to a living wage in its production.
#RaiseTheWages
#LivingWageNow
ENDS
Images available: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Opnx1yvGCrfCVPtTJVY1BF3RpQSB_txn
For media enquiries, please contact press@labourbehindthelabel.org.