The people making clothes for the fashion industry suffered greatly during the pandemic. Buyers cancelled thousands of orders when the lockdowns hit, and as shockwaves coursed through the supply chain, factories closed overnight and millions of workers were thrown out of work. They were owed a lot of money when the doors shut. Some particularly brave employees took their complaints of mass wage theft directly to the brands, but still – years later – they haven’t all received their final paycheques.
The mostly women workers of the Wai Full garment factory in Cambodia woke up one morning in 2020 to learn they were penniless: their factory had closed down without paying them their final wages or legal severance pay. They weren’t the only ones. Major fashion brands were pulling orders across Asia and refusing to pay for the piles of clothing that had already been produced. This caused a huge cash flow problem for producers, who adapted by laying off workers, withholding wages, or simply disappearing without settling accounts.
Factory workers making clothes for major fashion brands are estimated to be owed $12 billion in lost income from that first year of the pandemic alone. This invisible injustice, carried out on women already on poverty pay, was simply brushed away when the high street geared up again. New orders came in, but nobody looked back.
