Bulgarian textile mills, unions and brands including H&M, Inditex and ASOS met recently to look at ways to improve wages and labor rights in the country’s garment and footwear sectors. The groups met as a part of an EU-supported project targeting the textile sectors of seven countries in the region, namely Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. All face challenges in improving employer-employee relations and labor rights in their respective textile sectors, with these issues hampering growth and competitiveness.

In Bulgaria, there are around 1,00,000 workers in the textile, garment, leather and footwear industries. The sector is characterised by low wages and poor image, which has led to labor shortages. Bulgaria has the lowest minimum wage in the European Union. There are very few collective bargaining agreements.

Industriall Global Union has introduced the cooperation between brands and unions which started with the Bangladesh Accord, and continued with global framework agreements (GFAs) and the ACT initiative which is intended to achieve living wages through industry-wide collective bargaining linked to the brands’ purchasing practices. A training session was carried out for national, regional and local level union representatives on how to use GFAs for organising workers into unions.

Representatives from GFA partner brands H&M, Inditex and ASOS, also members of ACT, explained how they in cooperation with unions solve problems when they occur and promote social dialogue and collective bargaining.