The Coronavirus Is Exposing Holes in Our Current Fast Fashion Model

As much of the world practices social distancing to combat the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the workforce is being split into nonessential workers, those who should stay home to flatten the curve, and essential workers, those on whom we rely for our basic needs. While it seems obvious that major clothing outlets fit into the nonessential category, many fast fashion brands (including H&M and Zara) were still open for the majority of March, as the pandemic spread across the globe. Retail workers were on the front lines of a global crisis in the middle of growing confirmed numbers of cases. Now, they’re facing mass layoffs.

While brands like Zara, which announced worldwide store closures on March 18, have said that they’re joining in the fight against the coronavirus, donating masks for health workers, Aja Barber, a writer and consultant focusing on fashion’s intersections with feminism, race, and colonization, says action should be taken to support the health and safety of their workers. “They [all major fast fashion brands] could just not make their employees work during a deadly pandemic,” Aja tells Teen Vogue, insisting that they could have closed in the best interest of their workers earlier in the course of the pandemic. “If you’re really interested in fighting COVID-19, that’s an obvious and very easy way.” (Teen Vogue has reached out to Zara and will update the story if they respond.)

Aja hopes that shedding a light on retail employees’ working conditions during the pandemic, through her Instagram, will force people to be more critical of the entire fast fashion system. “If a business is willing to risk your life and you don’t like it, why aren’t we all looking out for supply chain workers who deal with the life-risking situations every day?

H&M provided the following statement to Teen Vogue, explaining that they began closing stores in the U.S. prior to all of their stores closing on March 18: “In addition to H&M’s regular wellness policy, which includes the use of sick time, we have provided support to our colleagues with additional pay in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This is an extraordinary situation in which we are forced to make difficult decisions. We regret to say that we have found the need to furlough some members of our workforce in the U.S. due to the negative impacts the corona situation has had on our business.”

In addition to impacted retail workers, the pandemic has sent shockwaves through the most vulnerable workers in fashion’s supply chain. Those 40 million garment workers, many of whom are living in low-wage countries across Southeast Asia and Europe, are currently facing factory closures. Some are paying the price for major brands canceling orders, sometimes even when the work has already been done. Bloomberg reports that European companies have canceled roughly $1.5 billion worth of orders from about 1,089 garment factories in Bangladesh due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Since brands often pay their suppliers weeks or even months after delivery, this means that those suppliers pay up front for the materials. H&M was one of the first major retailers to agree to pay their suppliers for canceled orders where products have been manufactured; now others have joined their commitment, including PVH (with deferred payments), according to a recent report from the Penn State Center for Global Workers’ Rights. Many major brands, such as Primark, Walmart, and J.C. Penney, are yet to make that commitment, according to the report. Teen Vogue reached out to these brands for comment, with only Primark responding (at the time of publication). “Every store in every country in which we operate is now closed. We are losing sales of £650m a month as a result. We have therefore been left with no option,” a Primark spokesperson said. “This has been unprecedented action for unprecedented and frankly unimaginable times. We at Primark have worked alongside so many of our suppliers for many years and value our relationships enormously.”

A recent report by the Worker Rights Consortium details that there are more than 150 million workers in lower-income countries producing goods for export to North America, Europe, and Japan. In the apparel, footwear, and textile sector, many of these workers are women who are their family’s primary wage earner. “Very few of these workers have ever been paid enough to accumulate any savings,” the report states, making them some of the most vulnerable workers in the global economy. They’re calling for fast fashion brands to take “a more equitable approach to sharing the financial burden of the crisis,” after profiting from the cheap labor of these workers for years.

Already, more than 1 million garment workers in Bangladesh have been fired or furloughed (temporarily suspended from work) because of the cancellations, according to the Penn State report. In response, Fashion Revolution, a global nonprofit calling for greater transparency in the fashion industry, put a call to action in place, asking people to send an email to their favorite brands and demand that they pay for orders already placed.

Barber thinks an approach to mitigate disparities is for supply chain workers to be considered employees for the companies they produce for—instead of being contracted through third parties—and receive the same benefits as others within the business. “In the business of contracting labor, fast fashion houses are often allowed to wash their hands of the most vulnerable and yet critical folks within the supply chain—those who make their products,” she says. “In separating makers from other employees within a system, we create a class system where one group is inherently valued less than the other.”

Céline Semaan, executive director of Slow Factory Foundation, views the recent treatment of retail workers as a curtain that has been lifted. “The realities of fast fashion have entered the mainstream culture. Exploitation of labor is not only seen abroad, but is something that has been exposed right here in America,” she says. “This pandemic is putting the entire fashion industry on hold while placing an incredible amount of economic pressure on ethical brands and independent designers. It is breaking the model of fast fashion: overproduction and overconsumption.”

While most stores are closed, online shopping continues and puts employees for fast fashion giants like ASOS on the front lines, staying open with up to 4,000 people at its warehouse in Grimethorpe, Barnsley, according to a March 28 statement from the GMB Union. “I’m currently in isolation as I live with someone who is high risk. However, because I have been told I am not sick myself I will not be entitled to sick pay. So I’m currently off work unpaid,” one ASOS employee told GMB Union. Teen Vogue has reached out to ASOS and will update the story should we hear back. Then there’s brands such as Everlane, advertising “radical transparency,” who Bernie Sanders accused of using the pandemic as an opportunity for “union busting” after mass firings of their union committee. Teen Vogue reached out to Everlane for further comment, and the company provided the following statement:

“COVID-19 has dramatically impacted the entire world, and Everlane is no exception. Our retail stores closed indefinitely and total revenue is off our original plan by 25%. This impact on our business put us in a position where we had to let go of 290 talented people across the company, 14% of which were on our customer experience team. Those impacted were offered two weeks severance and we were able to transition 20 customer experience team members into full time roles with benefits. These decisions had nothing to do with the unionization effort and everything to do with the dramatic impact COVID-19 has had on the global economy.”

Many hope that from the economic ashes of the coronavirus outbreak will be a call for new systems in place that put workers before profit. For the fashion industry, this would mean an industry overhaul. “From this point on, there is no going back,” says Seeman. “Do we need to continue supporting the fast fashion industry? Is there a way to reform the industry to slow it down entirely and to design its systems to not only be circular and regenerative but to be anti-racist and anti-colonial as well, abolishing exploitation of people and nature altogether?” If you ask her team at Slow Factory, the answer is yes. “When we are collectively at the brink of an economic tsunami, it isn’t realistic to expect business as usual.”

With this economic shift comes a growing shift in consciousness that could be the final nail in the coffin for fast fashion brands. However, exactly what this new fashion industry would look like is still yet to be determined. For Ngozi Okaro, executive director of Custom Collaborative, a New York nonprofit helping women in low-income and immigrant communities to develop careers in sustainable fashion, worker empowerment is nonnegotiable. “The only way we can have sustainable fashion is if we pay sustainable wages for workers,” she says. “People want to bargain, but I don’t think they realize that when they do that they’re extracting something from someone.”

Within the uncertainty and destruction of current daily lives comes both a responsibility and opportunity for the fashion industry to prioritize labor rights, from retail workers through the supply chain. For brands that don't, Aja warns that there will no longer be room for them in the near future. “The future looks like smaller profit margins for fast fashion. No two ways about it,” she explains. “We need ethical and sustainable companies, and right now not a single fast fashion brand is doing that. Shape up or ship out.”

Originally Appeared on Teen Vogue