Many are talking about the strong community on Steemit. I thought it was time to prove this. Let as many people know that we do not agree and support "Turn Around, H&M.” Only when we all work together, real change is possible.
Employees who stitch clothes at H&M's so-called 'best' suppliers still earn poverty wages. This is shown by the results of an investigation carried out by the international Clean Clothes Campaign. Bulgarian suppliers do not even pay the statutory minimum wages and let their employees work up to 80 hours per week.
You enter the factory at 8 o'clock in the morning, but you do not know when you're back outside. Sometimes we only go home at 4 o'clock at night. - an employee who makes clothes for H&M at Koush Moda, an H&M supplier in Bulgaria.
Interviewed employees in India and Turkey earn one third and in Cambodia less than half of the estimated living wage. In Bulgaria the wage is less than 10 percent of what is needed for employees and their families to have a decent life. Wages are so low that they often have to work overtime to cover their basic needs.
Overtime in 3 of the 6 factories investigated often exceeds the legal maximum. In Bulgaria, employees even have to work overtime to earn the minimum wage. Because of the low wages, excessively long working days and additional domestic tasks, the workers are malnourished, overtired and regularly pass out. A third of the Indian women and two-thirds of the interviewed employees in Cambodia have already faint at work. It’s not an exception in Bulgaria either. These research results are in the report "H&M: fair living wages were promised, poverty wages are the reality".
H&M’s promise
In 2013 H&M has been praised worldwide for the promise to pay a living wage to 850,000 employees by 2018. Later, the company reformulated that promise into a less ambitious plan. Instead of directly paying a living wage to all workers, H&M would only provide 'mechanisms' that would allow at least 80 per cent of workers in the supply chain to receive a living wage. The study by the international Clean Clothes Campaign shows that the company - 2 months before the expiration of the fifth birthday - is still far from its intended purpose.
H&M also promised to encourage national governments of producing countries to raise minimum wages. The government of Bangladesh has just announced to raise the minimum wage for garment workers for the first time in 5 years from 53 euros to 80 euros per month. This is still far below any estimate of what a living wage should main. Trade unions demand 160 euros per month, an amount that reflects better the rising cost of living in Bangladesh. Due to high inflation (between 7 and 12 percent annually), the purchasing power of Bengali garment workers declined year after year. Despite repeated appeals to H&M to publicly support the minimum wage demand of the trade unions, H&M remains silent.
If you want to demand a living wage and fair conditions of employment throughout H&M's supply chain, sign the petition of "Turn Around, H&M!." 100,000 people were already ahead of you.