06/27/2023
THIS is how a worker at one fast fashion facility lives
Next time you buy something at H&M or SHEIN, think about it :
The daily schedule of “Robin”, who sews for big-name brands (the publication has hidden the real names of the brands or employees for fear of retaliation on workers by factory owners).
"I wake up in our hostel, which is located on the factory grounds. I share a room with 60 other people, and there are three rooms in total. I get myself out of bed and walk over to the toilets, where I wait in line to use them. There are 15 toilets, but five or six of them are often so dirty they aren’t operational. This means 180 of us are forced to line up to use just eight or nine toilets in the morning. It is very unhygienic.
After we finish our shower, there’s no time or facilities to cook and make our own breakfast. So, we have to buy breakfast from the factory-owned canteen. The food is expensive, even for a piece of bread, a cup of tea, or a banana.
If anything goes wrong in the morning and we are late to the factory to start work—even by a minute—they can deduct between one and two hours from our salary.
Every morning, for six days a week, this ordeal is a headache.
I clock in to start work on my shift at 8am. It’s intense: the factory managers pressure us to continue sewing no matter what. Bathroom breaks are not to take longer than five minutes, even though the bathroom is a four-minute walk there and back. If we exceed five minutes, they start yelling at us.
They don’t give us a water break. We aren’t allowed to get up from our chairs to give our backs a break. If we do, we are scolded by our supervisors. I’ve been hit twice on my body, and they regularly call me swear words. For these reasons, most of us don’t bother.
By 11:00am I’ve been sewing bra cups for three hours, and I’m thinking about how much I wish I could drop everything and go back to my country. I want to go back home, but the factory managers keep our passports, and they tell us that we have to pay the remaining costs of our visa fee to the company, which could be up to $700 USD, to get them back if we want to leave.
By midday my whole body is numb, and I’m struggling to move properly. The pain is most intense in my hands, arms, and across my lower back. I can’t even walk properly; I stumble from the pain from sitting the whole morning with no break.
At 1pm I start my lunch break, which is 45 minutes long. It takes me a while to get up because my body aches. I can’t afford to eat at the canteen—it’s too expensive—so many of us have cooked the night before. But the factory doesn’t have refrigerators or cool storage facilities for us to keep the food overnight. And as it’s a hot, tropical country, the food sometimes goes bad. There is, unfortunately, nothing we can do about it.
When the auditors come, they typically walk around eating expensive food, which is worth the same as multiple days of our salaries. Meanwhile, our management tells us what to say to the auditors, threatening us if we don’t oblige.
There is an injury among us on average around once a week. The factory managers haven’t provided us with any safety equipment. All we are given is a mask, but we have no needle guards—nothing. And if we get injured, they’ll take us to the doctor, but they’ll deduct the medical fees from our salary over several months. "
Today, factory workers are expected to produce more for less. Fast fashion is driving the industry’s accelerating pace and other brands follow suit, to keep up with consumer demand. Heartbreaking conditions for SO many people who make clothes.
