93) What If Fashion Put Workers First?
What if fashion brands put garment workers first? What if a fashion brand set the prices they pay to their suppliers based on ensuring workers were making a living wage, rather than negotiating the prices as low as possible to maximize profits?
This is part of implementing more responsible purchasing practices — purchasing practices meaning not how the consumer buys something, but how the brand purchases their orders from their suppliers, since most brands do not produce their own clothes.
The reality is that right now the system is set up with the wrong incentives. For example, Buyers at many fashion brands receive bonuses if they achieve larger margins with their orders they purchase from their suppliers — larger margins meaning they pay their suppliers less, and thus the supplier will have less money to pay their workers fairly or invest in sustainability initiatives like transitioning to clean energy.
So we need a paradigm shift. True systems change.
And one proposal for doing so is worker-centric pricing, which Stella and I are going to dive into in this episode!
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MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
- Sustainable Fashion Career Platform: Conscious Fashion Collective
- Community: Conscious Fashion Collective Membership
- Article: What If Fashion Prices Put Garment Workers First?
- Doc: Worker-Centric Pricing Model
- Organization: Union of Concerned Researchers in Fashion
- Instagram: Aja Barber
- Podcast Episode: EP71: Is Sustainable Fashion Always More Expensive?
- Podcast Episode: EP60: Living Wages for Garment Makers with Anne Bienias of Clean Clothes Campaign
- Podcast Episode: EP45: Are Better Brand-Supplier Relationships The Missing Link to Ethical Fashion?
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