Negative Effects Of Fast Fashion Industry

It is impossible to beat a cheap price. In today’s world, finding a sought after item at a dirt cheap price is one the main motivation American’s get in the car and battle the craziness in the mall. And as the basic American human beings that we are, it is never possible for us to be complacent with the amount of stuff we currently have. Eventually, we will come across a friend that has the next must have item that will cause us to run to our local mall and purchase a similar item at the lowest price possible. With all that said, it is no wonder why the industry of fast fashion has taken off over the past decade. Felipe Caro and Victor Martínez-de-Albéniz, researchers for UCLA’s school of supply chain coordination, define fast fashion as “a business model that combines four elements: (i) fashionable clothes mostly for consumers under 40; (ii) affordable prices in the mid-to-low range; (iii) quick response; and (iv) frequent assortment changes”. Retailers like H&M, Forever 21, Target, and Wal-Mart have been able to take this business model and make a fortune. But while all these quick trends and cheap prices are great for the consumer, its cost on the foreign worker and the environment does not go uncovered. In the book Overdressed by Elizabeth Cline, she presents many arguments supporting the claim that fast fashion is unethical based on

Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes."

started “outsourcing more, consuming more, using more resources, and paying less” (The True Cost). This equates to subtracting massive numbers and only adding single digits in an effort to make zero. It simply does not work. Instead, unskilled workers and innocent citizens of developing countries must compensate for the atrocious subtracting of the “fast fashion” industry. Their compensation ranges from uncontrollable seizures to infertility, and from difficulty breathing to watching their children grow up with significant mental and physical disabilities. This is the True

The fashion industry fuels the message that “the way to solve your problems is to consume more.” Therefore, making people buy things they don’t really need. Currently there are “80 billion clothes sold a year” and “40 million garment workers.” This industry encourages people to buy things based of their wants and not their needs, sometimes people buy clothes they never wear in their life so this means that these poor people working in sweatshops are getting abused and producing clothes for no reason.

In 2007, Victoria’s Secret was found to be using textile factories in Sri Lanka, which have been known for bad working conditions with employees working 14 to 15 hour days. Sri Lanka has a competitive advantage of Low cost labor and a literate work-force. “The workers’ wages amount to less than 3/10ths of one percent of the 14 dollar retail price of a Victoria’s Secret bikini” (Tasini). Victoria’s Secret has also been caught in exposing exact fallacy when using a factory that was supposedly considered free trade.

“Sweatshops” which is written by Gary Chaison who is an industrial relations scholar and labor historian at Clark University claim that the sweatshops are the workplace which is organised by the unethical employers. It means the workers work for a long time under the stressful and dangerous conditions but only get less wage in the sweatshops. The sweatshops are normally established for the fashion industry. The reason why are the sweatshops help the fashion industry to separate the higher and lower skilled job and contract out the lower skilled one easily. Moreover, the cost for establishing the sweatshops is lower because the equipment for making the clothes will cost less money and can be used for a long time. However, there are some advantages and disadvantages of the sweatshops that cause the argument of establishing.

Over the past decades the textile industry has changed immensely. Throughout the early 19th century fashion was the one thing that determined the worthiness of someone and how much money they earned. The rich wore top hats and the poor wore tatted clothing that hardly fit. Since then, the textile industry has become more knowledgeable about the environmental issues as well as more ethical and sustainable ways to produce clothing. The term ‘Fast fashion’ was developed in the U.S in the 1980’s however, it wasn’t called fast fashion it was called ‘quick response’ then the term ‘fast fashion’ came about in the late 1990s and the first part of the 21st century.

Cheap labor is viewed as one of the chief assets they can offer to entice investment by multinational companies, which creates jobs and provides capital for development. It is common for clothing companies to close and reopen in order to take advantage of new tax exemptions or to smother union-organizing efforts. Activists are demanding an end to the misuse of rights of workers in the factories that are producing the garments that are sold in stores. When successful, these strategies have led to improved workplace

Activists say that global clothing brands like Tommy Hilfiger and the Gap and those sold by Walmart need to take responsibility for the working conditions in Bangladeshi factories that produce their clothes."

For investors in clothing retailers and manufacturers, the expiration of the MFA means good times ahead. Thirty million textile workers, on the other hand, have just been shoved off the cliff. The institutions that regulate global trade, the powerful nations that dominate them, and the corporations whose interests they promote are committed to reshaping global trade rules along neoliberal lines, even if the changes cause upheaval for tens of millions of workers worldwide. There 's nothing inherently wrong with clothes being manufactured in China or India rather than in Mauritius or Bangladesh. But there is something wrong with a global trade regime that pushes millions of poor workers into one sector then, with little ado, kicks them out

The chemicals used to colour textiles can be dangerous to our health and the environment

“Working ten-hour days in the apparel industry lifts employees above (and often far above) the $2 per day threshold.” And “in half of the countries it results in earning more than three times the national average!” Says Powell, who has written many books on sweatshops highlighting the positives and negatives in the industry.

The apparel industry has historically relied on a contracting system that has allowed brand-name companies to eschew legal liability for the working conditions of those who actually sew their garments. A race to the

The textile and apparel industry is one of the oldest and largest industries. The textile and apparel industry plays an important role in the United States manufacturing system. “Displaced textile and apparel workers, like employed textile and apparel workers, were more likely to be female than all displaced U.S. workers, and also were less likely to have a high school diploma and less likely to be a U.S. citizen” (USDA, 2014). There is one dependent variable to exemplify in this project, which is the U.S. textile employment rate and three independent variables related to the U.S. textile employment rate, including workforce gender, labor cost (wages), and ethnicity.

The Myanmar garment industry is still extremely small and it tends to specialists in higher quality by comparing with other countries in the region. MGMA Chairman, U Myint Soe said that “Myanmar’s apparel industry is small compared with our neighbors in Bangladesh, China and Thailand, but we currently experiencing robust and sustained growth as international investors and retailers discover the attractive features of our industry”(Russell, 13 Jan: 2015). The future potential of the Myanmar garment industry is sourcing location. Nowadays, buyers’ belief that the workers can be trained for collaborative partnerships with them to improve efficiencies and compliance. The Myanmar garment also has some advantages over other regional garment producers, and authors again point to low wages (lower than everywhere except Bangladesh) and a supply of relatively well-educated labor. In the Myanmar garment sector, as present, production with CMP contracting system with reasonable reasons included with reduce taxes, easy of finance flows within the business. But today, some factories used FOB system which is common model in international garment industry and also the Myanmar’s tax system provides incentives for CMP production over the FOB system.