Daisy Gonzalez’s mother emigrated to California from Guatemala in the ’80s and landed a job as a garment worker. “My mother was a trimmer and an ironer. I learned how difficult this work was for her body from her experience,” Gonzalez says. Beyond the difficult conditions, the pay was equally abysmal. She recounts her mother once working for a week, and the employer paying her just $30. Her mother’s struggles opened Gonzalez’s eyes to the trenchant problem of “wage theft,” a phenomenon she says is built into the very fabric of the garment industry and its global supply chain.
“Fashion is built on colonial and racist structures,” says Ayesha Barenblat, founder and CEO of Remake, a community of women’s rights, ethical fashion, and environmental advocates on a mission to shift the industry’s deleterious practices that harm workers and the planet. For Barenblat, the long legacy of abuse by brands is inherently a feminist issue whose solutions must center justice. “If you care about women’s rights and environmental justice, then you must care about how the fashion industry operates,” she says.
In 2013, the collapse of the Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, captured global headlines. The eight-story building housed shops and
— source yesmagazine.org | Rucha Chitnis | Dec 28, 2021