About half the industrial disputes that took place last year in Bangladesh were in the garment sector. The next highest incidence of industrial disputes was seen in the transport sector, followed by tobacco, agriculture, sugar and waterways transports.

Some 40 per cent of the disputes took place over arrears, 25 per cent over rights and other claims, ten per cent for closure of the factories, eight per cent for beating workers, four per cent for over-time allowance and four per cent for compensation.

A total 68 demonstrations, 21 human chains, 18 strikes, 15 road blocks and 12 gatherings was seen last year. Of the total, 307 were killed in the transport sector, making it the deadliest sector, followed by construction at 131. Almost 517, including 109 female, workers were injured in their workplaces last year. Of the number, 158 were in the garment sector, which is the highest, followed by construction at 91.

Since the garment sector is the largest in the country, the number of disputes is bound to be higher than in other sectors. Some 4.4 million workers are directly employed in the apparel sector in the country in more than 4,000 active garment factories. And if backward and forward linkage industries are included, the number would surpass a crore.

Deckers Brands a global leader in designing, marketing and distributing innovative footwear, apparel and accessories recently appointed William L McComb to its board of directors. He is an expert in building strong brands and leveraging omni-channel consumer engagement strategies. 

Currently, serving as an advisor to Bain & Company’s digital consulting practice, William McComb also serves on the boards of the Center for Business Analytics at the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Business, and The Marshall Project, a NYC based non-profit, where he chairs the nominating and governance committee. He was formerly employed on the boards of the American Apparel and Footwear Association and the National Retail Federation, among others. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Miami University (Ohio) and a Masters of Business Administration in Marketing and Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Clean Clothes Campaign is dedicating this year’s International Labor Day to the hundreds of thousands of workers who produce garments for H&M. They are waiting for the brand to stop turning its back on the commitment that living wages would become a reality by 2018. Starting on May 1 and continuing throughout 2018, Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) is placing the spotlight on H&M.

The brand’s public commitment to ensure workers receive living wages, and the associated roadmap, received a lot of positive media coverage in 2013, along with cheers from countless consumers who care about sustainable fashion.

However, the roadmap failed to state a living wage benchmark, among other issues. More than four years after H&M published the roadmap, hundreds of thousands of workers producing H&M’s garments are still not receiving living wages. Together with the International Labor Rights Forum and other international partners, Clean Clothes Campaign will be making sure throughout the year that consumers are aware of H&M’s 2013 living wage commitment, of the brand’s ability to fulfill it, and of the current practice: stocking shelves on the backs of workers who have to constantly worry about how they will feed their families, keep a roof over their head, send their children to school, pay for doctors' visits and cover other basic needs.

As per Pew Research Center study, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Vietnam, and other such nations pay highest import duties in the US market, due to their substantial trade in clothing and footwear. Amongst them Bangladesh paid the highest tariff of 15.2 per cent of the value of its shipments. In 2017, Bangladesh’s exports to the US totaled $5.7 billion; 95 per cent of these included clothes, shoes, headgear, and related items. 

As the US is Bangladesh’s single largest export destination, about 20 per cent of country’s export receipts come from the US. ITC database shows, the reason for such high tariffs is protectionism. The average American tariff for knitwear or crocheted clothing is 18.7 per cent and 15.8 per cent for non-knitted clothing, the two highest average rates out of 98 broad import categories. Footwear is close behind with the average tariff rate of 11.9 per cent.

The ongoing tiff between US-China trade will have significant impact on global economic landscape. How things pan out is still not known, yet going by the present picture, things don’t look too bright between the two countries with severe allegations made by the US government on China. President Trump on April 3 released a long-winding list of Chinese imports that his administration intended to target as part of a crackdown on what he believed to be unfair trade practices. The sectors covered by the proposed tariffs included products used for robotics, IT, communication technology and aerospace. The US Trade Representative (USTR), said it was targeting products that benefit China's industrial plans while minimising the impact on the US economy.

The US was expected to levy tariffs on $50 billion to $60 billion of Chinese imports annually. The official announcement underlined that the total value of imports subject to the tariff increase would be equal to ‘the harm caused by China’s unreasonable technology transfer policies.’ The official note remarked that the Trade Representative proposes an additional duty of 25 per cent on a list of products from China. The American list included over 1,300 imported products. The Chinese reaction was immediate. The next day, it announced additional tariffs on 106 US products. This was in addition to 128 other US export products that had been listed earlier by China. The effective start date for the new tariffs has not been announced, though China’s ministry of commerce made it clear that the tariffs were designed to target up to $50 billion of US products annually.

On the ongoing situation, Rick Helfenbein, President & CEO, American Apparel and Footwear Association, stated the industry is pleased with the administration’s decision to avoid adding tariffs to US imports of apparel, footwear, and travel goods from China. At the same time, they showed their concerned towards the list that includes tariffs on machinery used in their domestic manufacturing process. This would directly raise costs on domestic manufacturers and impact their ability to grow Made in USA. Speculations are rife that the cost of doing business would go up, and even though the US President harped on the job protection string, many believed that the additional tariffs would only push up costs of apparel for the average American customer. American companies have already scouting for alternative sourcing hubs, since domestic apparel manufacturing would become more expensive with the additional duties on machineries.

Stats and the impact

As a retaliatory measure, apart from cotton, China proposed additional tariffs on soybeans and pork. The National Cotton Council averred that China is the second largest export market with purchases of approximately 2.5 million bales of US cotton. Ron Croft, chairman of the Council, said that no one can overstate the importance of China’s market to the US cotton farmers and the importance of US cotton in meeting the needs of China’s textiles industry. The cotton industries of the US and China enjoy a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship. In lieu to this, the NCC encouraged the two governments to engage in immediate discussions that can resolve trade tensions and preserve this long-term collaborative relationship. The US cotton industry stands ready to assist the US Government and its trading partners in China to find a resolution to this damaging trade dispute. The high-profile United States Fashion Industry Association (USFIA) had, even reiterated over an earlier statement that while they support efforts to protect the intellectual property of brands and retailers, they will never support punitive tariffs based on the fiction that imports harm domestic jobs and growth. These new tariffs will not create more jobs in the United States, but instead, will harm the companies that already create thousands upon thousands of high-quality jobs in design, in marketing, in retail, in logistics, in compliance, right here in the US.

The way ahead

China produces about 32 million bales of cotton but needs roughly 45 million bales; the shortfall is met by imports. China’s cotton stockpile is expected to come down to around 15 million bales by the end of this year; much of that is reckoned to be of poor quality. Among the initial reactions after the conflagration broke out were those from the cotton sector in India. Early speculations hovered over the possibility of India trebling its cotton exports to China. Atul Ganatra, president, Cotton Association of India, stated that India was looking to sell between 2.5 million and 3 million bales, each of 170 kg, to China in the next marketing season beginning October, up from around 800,000 bales of expected exports in the 2017-18 marketing year. This year China is scheduled to import 2.5 million bales of cotton from the US, with the other major suppliers being Brazil and Australia. But for India to replace Australia, to start with, as the second largest exporter of cotton to China, Indian cotton will need to match that of the Australian variety.

Thanks to the rise of fast fashion, textiles waste in the UK has been sharply increasing in recent years.
But now high street names like M&S, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have set ambitious sustainable cotton targets.

Retailers and brands are focusing on a number of priority garments which have been identified as having the highest environmental costs in terms of manufacture and which sell in the largest numbers.

Top of the list are women’s dresses, jumpers and jeans, followed by men’s T-shirts and jumpers. Women’s jeans have been singled out in terms of the amount of water used during their production while dresses and jumpers and men’s T-shirts are similarly high volume products which require work to tackle their carbon footprint and supply chain waste.

The amount of clothing in household residual waste has decreased since 2012, falling by 50,000 tons in the household waste stream. This is a fall of 14 per cent and represents the equivalent weight of more than 300 jumbo jets.

Reuse and recycling signatories are helping divert an increasing amount of clothing away from landfill at end of life.

But though fewer clothes are ending up in residual waste, clothing purchases have risen over the last five years. This is due to relatively low prices and the increased population.

Asos, Wrangler and Primark are among the major fashion brands that are becoming more transparent about their supply chains.

The 3rd annual Fashion Transparency Index, which ranked 150 major global brands according to how much they are willing to reveal about their social and environmental practices, shows that the industry has a long way to go before it can confidently tell us

Many online and high street favourites scored less than 10 per cent. The report found that things are slowly moving in the right direction. More brands have published a list of where their clothes are cut, sewn and completed and 62 per cent of brands are disclosing their process for fixing problems when violations are found in a supplier factory.

However, with none of the brands scoring more than 60per cent there is still a lot of room for improvement.

The Fashion Revolution campaign believes that although change is slowly happening, many companies are still operating in broadly the same way that enabled the RanaPlaza disaster to occur.

According to the an ambassador for Adidas there are people working on sustainability within these companies every day, but it’s not easy to track every cotton farm and everyone involved, as there are thousands of locations around the world. Fashion Revolution co-founder, Carry Somers, agreed that the fight for sustainability is not an easy one, but how brands are responding to the report by upping their game proves that improvements can be made.

The textile industry was one of the booming sub-sectors of the Nigerian economy in the post independence years.
Driven by locally grown cotton and with a huge demand for clothing by a fast growing population, it provided direct and indirect employment to hundreds of thousands of Nigerians for several decades.

Between 1985 and 1991, Nigeria’s textile industry recorded an annual growth of 67 per cent. In that period textile companies numbered around 180, employing about a million people, and accounting for over 60 per cent of the textile industry capacity in West Africa.

The story, however, changed in the early nineties when the sector took a massive dive. From about 180 thriving textile companies, the number came down to almost zero.

Over the years, there has been a steady decline in the operations of textile firms and then an eventual collapse of the industry, which has led to a loss of jobs, dearth of skilled manpower, low capacity utilization and drop in revenue due to lack of excise duties.

The dip in the fortunes of the industry was due to the influx of cheap textiles and fabrics into the country from all over the world and mainly from China.

Now the country is trying to attract the necessary investments into cotton farming and textile manufacturing and so become a major producer and exporter of textiles in the world.

Japan textile industry have expressed willingness to invest for a number of unique fabrics of their innovation to Indonesia.

Director General of Small and Medium Industries (IKM) of Ministry of Industry, Gati Wibawanings says that several Japanese textile industries have come to him and expressed his desire to invest in Indonesian sector.

He further added that a message from a Japanese company from Usawa was received that expressed their desire to build a cotton textile industry with silk quality.

They claim to want to produce fiber (fiber), yarn as well as fabric made from cotton. The technology they found with merebushancurkan cotton was able to produce fiber and yarn and even fabric with silk-like quality when made from cotton.

Usawa company representatives view Indonesia as very suitable for cotton plants because it only has 2 seasons. At present they are ready to build the innovative textile industry to Indonesia.

Gati mentioned that, other companies interested in developing fabric / textiles made from hemp. They are planting hemp on 2 hectares of land in Malang, and if successful, they declare will build fabric fabrics factory in Indonesia.

Indonesia hopes to triple textile and textile product exports in the next five years.
If this happens, this sector will be Indonesia’s largest non-oil export contributor and create jobs for six million people.

Indonesia’s exports in 2017 went up six per cent compared to exports in 2016. Apparel exports rose from 7.21 billion dollars in 2016 to 7.93 billion dollars last year, while textile exports stagnated at 4.66 billion dollars.

In 2016, apparel exports from this southeast Asian nation decreased 3.2 per cent due to several challenges including high logistics costs and gas and power tariffs being higher than other competitor countries.

At present, the US is the largest clothing importer from Indonesia. If the country were to lobby with the US to expand its Generalised System of Preferences to include more Indonesian apparel and accessories, this would facilitate the entry of more Indonesian products into the US at lower tariffs.

A small 0.62 per cent year on year growth was detected in Indonesia’s textile exports in the first half of 2017. This modest growth was supported by a 20.4 per cent year on year rise in knitwear exports.

Indonesia is one of the world’s largest textile manufacturers and exporters (although trailing far behind China).