Security for Apparel Workers: Alternative Models

Author
Judd, Jason
Kuruvilla, Sarosh
Jackson, J. Lowell
Abstract

[Excerpt] The Covid-19 pandemic has brought to center stage the precarity that apparel workers face currently and have faced for decades. The COVID crisis has prompted some degree of soul-searching nationally as well as globally amongst all stakeholders in the global apparel industry. This moment may well give rise to a sustainable method of alleviating the precarity that global apparel workers face. The proposal regarding a global severance fund to compensate apparel workers who have lost their jobs and income—the subject of this paper—is a first step in this direction.

This paper places proposals for a severance fund (or ‘welfare’ fund in similar proposals) against the background of existing approaches that attempt to provide apparel workers globally with some degree of income security. The draft proposal takes as its point of departure the notion that the current business model and the mobility of supply chains means that employers and governments risk pricing themselves out of the market once they start investing in social protection systems, including unemployment and severance benefits. The key idea is that because apparel and footwear workers in many countries do not have well-funded and democratically-administered social protection schemes for unemployment and often denied legally required severance payments from employers, the provision of these types of temporary income security for apparel workers requires concerted action by the industry’s stakeholders—brands and retailers, employers, labor unions, government and civil society organizations. Sharing responsibility for ensuring welfare payments for apparel workers is a win-win solution that protects workers, and can prevent reputational damage and reduce legal liability to the industry.

Date Issued
2022-04
Publisher
Cornell University, ILR School, Global Labor Institute
Keywords
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Type
report
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