On Thursday, Amnesty International urged global textile companies and the governments of four Asian countries to take action to uphold workers’ rights in the sector and ensure decent wages.

The NGO, which on Thursday published two reports on the issue, says fashion brands manufacturing in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka must urgently take steps to protect workers’ rights across their supply chains.

Drawing on nearly 90 interviews across 20 factories in these four countries, the reports detail “widespread violations of freedom of association in the garment industry,” including infringements of workers’ rights and acts of harassment and violence by employers, it says.

“In many respects, the fashion industry is a model built on the exploitation of low-cost labour, and we see producing countries such as India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka effectively pressured to keep wages low and to suppress unionisation, because they want brands to place orders with them,” Dominique Muller, a researcher on the textile industry at Amnesty, told AFP.

While the textile sector accounts for up to 40% of manufacturing jobs in these countries, workers are “underpaid and overworked, with limited access to fundamental rights, and are systematically deprived of their rights through informal and precarious contracts,” Amnesty says.

Yet, it laments, “the garment industry has not properly addressed the denial of these essential rights.”

Amnesty sent 21 companies a questionnaire requesting information on their human rights policies, monitoring, and concrete actions related to freedom of association. However, “there is little evidence to determine whether human rights policies are being implemented at factory level”.

“Companies must stop simply repeating their commitment to freedom of association and adopt an active sourcing strategy that… rewards suppliers and countries that respect this freedom,” urged Dominique Muller.

These reports are published against the backdrop of the European Union unravelling a directive on social and environmental due diligence for large companies.

In mid-November, MEPs voted to dismantle the core ambitions of the text, narrowing the scope of companies covered and removing some of their social and environmental obligations.