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Report: Watch Your Step

Report: Watch Your Step

A Study on the Social and Environmental Impacts of Tanneries in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, India.

Every one of us wears shoes every day. But do we ever ask ourselves where the leather comes from to make our shoes? How is the skin of an animal turned into a shoe? Who does this work and under what conditions? This report takes us on a journey to the beginning of a leather shoe. The report looks at the leather industry in India and reveals the social and environmental impacts of tanneries. It provides a glimpse at the adverse conditions at tanneries in India, where people work with minimal or no protective gear, for payment below the minimum wage and no social security benefit. The workers themselves suffer from occupational diseases and the communities around the tanneries have to deal with polluted rivers and drinking water and the dumping of solid waste without regard to environmental standards and rules.

 

Read the main report: Watch Your Step Report

Read the factsheet: Watch Your Step Factsheet

 

Published in 2017. 

Tanneries in India

Report: Something is a Foot

Report: Something is a Foot

How human rights standards and environmental regulations in the footwear industry are being quietly ignored by banks.

 

The aim of this investigation is to uncover and analyse financial relationships between European financial service providers and the European shoe industry and, in the process, address the following questions: Which loans and investments are being issued by which financial institutions, under what conditions, to which companies
in the footwear sector? Do the financial service providers specify mandatory ecological and social guidelines or criteria for their business clients? Do financial service providers require responsible business management from their business clients, in particular with regard
to the handling of social and ecological problems in supply chains?

The findings of this investigation trace back to research and analysis carried out by the German NGO Facing Finance on behalf of the Change Your Shoes campaign.
A total of 23 European footwear companies and their financial relationships with 23 different financial service providers were analysed over the period from June 2012 to June 2016. The financial service providers were also invited to complete a survey explaining whether and how social and ecological norms and standards played a role in their loan and equity decisions.

 

Download the report: Something is a Foot

 

Published in 2017

Report: No Excuses for Homework

Report: No Excuses for Homework

Report: No Excuses for Homework

Working conditions in the Indonesian leather and footwear sector.

Indonesia is the fourth largest footwear manufacturer worldwide after China, India, and Vietnam, producing one billion pairs of shoes in 2015 which equals a world share of 4.4 %. It is hence worth taking a look at Indonesia to learn more about the social and ecological footprint of leather shoes worn in Europe. But despite some initial achievements and the existence of considerable legislation, working conditions in the Indonesian leather and footwear sector leave much to be desired. This is the result of report published today by SÜDWIND and INKOTA.

Download the report here >>

Download the factsheet here >>

Published March 2017.

The right to dream

The right to dream

The right to dream: homeworkers in the UK and India

 

Guest blog by Rachel McCarthy

 

Wednesday, 5:30am. Rose wakes up and makes breakfast for her two young children. Rushing out the door, she walks an hour to work in the rain as she can’t afford the bus fare. And there she sits crouching at the bench, sewing seams for garments at 6p an hour. The men at the factory earn 8p and upwards. After ten hours work, her fingers ache and her head throbs from the noise of the machines. At home after cooking tea, ironing, and seeing her daughters to bed, she finally hits the pillow at 11:30pm, exhausted by the drudgery of the day.

Rose lived in inner city London in the 1970s. Her story is emblematic of women’s lives across the UK. The Equal Pay Act was introduced in 1970, with the intention of women and men to be paid equal wages. In reality, though, women endured more years of discrimination and inequality.

 

Female factory workers in the 1970s 

 

I visited the exhibition Women and Work at the Tate Modern, which uncovered the lives of these invisible women in our country. I was struck by the account of Jean, a factory worker who smuggled bread into her stockings. Jean felt hungry and couldn’t wait until lunch to eat, so she took a bite- but she was caught and fired on the spot. Mary, another woman at the same factory, was found in tears because her weekly wages were docked for no reason, meaning she wouldn’t have enough money to pay her rent. With the help of the union representative, it turned out this was a ‘mistake’ which was corrected.

It’s shocking to think just two generations ago, women in this county- maybe your mother or grandmother- were trampled on in like this every day. Would you put up with it?

The demand for cheap labour didn’t stop there, and it was women who paid the price. Factory owners reacted quickly to the Equal Pay Act, downgrading people’s jobs and forcing women to work from their homes.

 

Homeworkers (Margaret Harrison, 1977) testifies to the real lives of women in the UK who were paid poverty wages for brands like Debenhams and Dorothy Perkins.

 

Ordinary women, desperate for work, had no choice but to work at home without legal rights or protection. They became invisible. Their hands were swollen and painful but they couldn’t afford to take time off sick. They got into debt when companies didn’t pay them their wages. They knew they were being exploited, but all the while they kept working and fighting for their children to have a better life.

Today, 40 years later, it is women in Asia who are the homeworkers. The effect of globalisation means that the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged women are now fighting this battle. Supply chains have changed dramatically, but the back-breaking exploitation and discrimination of working women remains. In fact, it’s become much worse.

In Ambur, a dry, dusty town in south India, many Dalit and Muslim women earn a living by stitching uppers on shoes. In the report Stitching Our Shoes- Homeworkers in South India, we found women are paid around 6 rupees a piece. This is about 96 rupees (£1) a day- well below the poverty line. These shoes are sold for between £40 and £100 on our high streets.

Women living in poverty have no choice but to take this work. “Today we may earn 50 rupees but there is no guarantee that we will have an income tomorrow,” says Sumitra, an Indian homeworker. “Those who work in the company have some guarantee for work but we don’t. If we fall sick and cannot work, then the day’s income is lost.”

 

A female homeworker stiches shoes in south India

 

Women sit, bent over on the floor for hours on end, repeatedly stitching the thread through the tough leather upper and pulling the needle to the right tension. Runa describes how the “numbness of the hands” means the homeworker “can’t even do the household everyday washing and can’t carry things quickly. So due to all the hand work, she is suffering.”

Workers are provided with the thread to stich the uppers, but they have to buy their own needles, trapping them into a cycle of debt. They suffer from pain in their back, neck and shoulders, and often have problems with their eyesight and chronic headaches.

It’s hard to understand how workers endure these inhumane conditions, day in, day out. But these women are under the thumb of powerful companies and intermediaries, who ruthlessly exploit their cheap labour. “We have nothing,” says Shanti. “That’s why we know this is employer exploitation. We have no other way. That’s why we are involved in this [work]. If I have any other income, definitely I wouldn’t do this.”

 

A workers’ rights protest in Bangladesh

 

But these women are not powerless. There are signs that they are beginning to fight back. In the villages surrounding Ambur, small groups of women have started to associate and advocate for better pay. It’s early days, and there is resistance from the powerful intermediaries and some of the workers who are afraid to put themselves forward. We can show our solidarity by demanding that retailers recognise homeworkers in their supply chains. I know there is hope that these women will fight for the rights and dignity they deserve.

I am struck by how the lives of these ordinary women from London and India- Rose, Jean and Mary; Sumitra, Runa and Shanti; are threaded together by shared experiences. Drudgery. Monotony. Broken dreams. But they believe they are better than this. Joining together is a surely the way they can protect and keep themselves strong.

Is the sunshine and beauty of nature only made for the fortunate few, or for all humanity to share?” This was published in Women’s Industrial News in London in 1914, but it echoes true today. All workers, women and men, deserve to earn a living with dignity. We won’t give up the fight. “Yes, it is bread we fight for- but we fight for roses too!

References

Long Hours Versus Efficiency by Miss Cave for the Industrial Sectional Committee in the Women’s Industrial News, 1914.

Women and Work: A Document on the Division of Labour in Industry by Margaret Harrison, Kay Hunt, Mary Kelly 1973-75, an exhibition at the Tate Modern.

Homeworkers by Margaret Harrison 1977, an exhibition at the Tate Modern.

Stitching Our Shoes- Homeworkers in South India a joint report by Homeworkers Worldwide, Labour Behind the Label and Cividep, March 2016.

Bread and Roses by James Oppenheim, 1911.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Pay_Act_1970

Action Update: Summer 2016

Action Update: Summer 2016

 

Find our what Labour Behind the Label have been up to in our bi-annual Action Update.

In this update we will update you on our transparency campaign and share with you some exciting updates about our Cambodia project where workers have gathered footage which shows what it’s like to work and live as garment workers. The Change your Shoes project has released four reports of which the India report was researched by our friends Home Workers Worldwide and co-written with LBL, and highlights the exploitation of women working in shoe production.

Read it here: Action Update Summer 2016