On the 8th November 2010, Channel 4 aired a programme entitled "Dispatches: Fashion's Dirty Secret" it exposes practices that you would think commonly go on in third world countries, sweatshops! but these sweatshops that they showed were in ENGLAND! Workers were being paid roughly £2.50 per hour, working long hours and in cramped conditions.
I highly recommend that everyone should watch this program as it will open your eyes to the nasty side of the fashion industry that we don't commonly see, below I have included the link:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/dispatches/episode-guide/series-75/episode-1
This program really made me angry, I think that we deserve to know where our clothes are made and what the conditions are like. It's a catch 22 for the employees because as much as they are angry about the conditions and pay they cannot say anything about it because half of them do not have Visas! This is definitely an issue that affects everyone, not just fashion students. We need to find the balance between production cost and workers conditions, does our need for cheap, cheerful and fast fashion really mean that we should use sweatshops in order to keep productions costs down? Or do we just play ignorant to what is going on?
Something needs to change.
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