The Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC), the garment industry’s largest alliance of labor unions and non-governmental organizations, has launched a new website, called “The Fashion Checker” to provide garment workers, activists and consumers access to real data from supply chains of the worlds’ biggest fashion brands including Primark, Bestseller and Topshop.

CCC will use data on the website to put pressure on brands and policymakers to implement living wages for all workers in the garment industry by Dec 31 2022. A recent survey conducted by the alliance found that 93 per cent brands failed to provide evidence of paying a living wage to any of their suppliers while 63 per cent could not disclose names or addresses of suppliers or only partially comply with the transparency pledge.

According to the CCC, brands have continued to ruthlessly seek lower prices for goods, forcing suppliers to operate on narrow profit margins and squeezing the wages of workers who are already living on the poverty line. Muriel Treibich, from the CCC said for decades, brands and retailers have built profits through a low-wage, labour- intensive model. Lack of transparency in the garment industry has enabled them to distance themselves from workers and evade their responsibility to address low wages and exploitation in supply chains.