WHO WE ARE
AND WHY WE
HAVE TO EXIST
Labour Behind the Label exists to fight alongside workers for a fashion industry where exploitation has no place.
As the UK’s longest running campaign group focusing exclusively on worker’s rights in fashion, we expose the lies hidden behind Big Fashion’s glossy billboards. We always take the side of workers, we don’t take money from brands, we fight the climate crisis, stand up to fashion’s bullies and challenge corporate power.
We make space for hope, one action at a time. We are not alone – our network spans over 250 trade unions and worker rights organisations across the world.
We have achieved a lot since we were founded in March 2000: pushing UK retailers to sign the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, ensuring Rana Plaza victims receive long-term compensation, supporting workers in Indonesia to receive legally-owed severance pay, and campaigning with Cambodian garment workers to demand a living wage Each win powers the next fight until we change fashion for good.
Who is the fashion industry?
The garment industry turns over almost $3 Trillion a year. Yet garment workers, 80% of them women, work for poverty pay, earning as little as £68 a month. Human rights abuses are systemic throughout the industry. Poverty wages, long hours, forced overtime, unsafe working conditions, sexual, physical and verbal abuse, repression of trade union rights and short term contracts are all commonplace in the clothing industry. It is an industry built on exploitation and growing under a lack of transparency that makes holding brands accountable difficult. We are dedicated to changing this.