Fair Wear, PST & AGT improve access to remedy for garment workers

Brands like Seidensticker, Esprit, S Oliver Group, G-Star and Hema will use Fair Wear’s complaints mechanism in factories in Vietnam and India. The five brands are either members of the German PST or signatories to the AGT.

Fair Wear has made its complaints system accessible to brands that signed up with other like-minded organisations for the first time, the organisation said in a press release.

“Joining forces is an important step towards providing more workers with better access to remedy and facilitate cooperation among brands,” said Fair Wear’s associate director Margreet Vrieling.

“Our signatory brands already have channels in place and since 2017, AGT operates a grievance and complaints mechanism used for issues which cannot be solved by involved parties themselves,” said Pierre Hupperts, chairman of the AGT. “Fair Wear’s complaints helplines provide garment workers with a welcome and easily accessible channel to file their concerns. This is of great added value for the involved brands.”

Providing workers with the opportunity to voice the issues affecting them – like excessive working hours, problems with payments, and ensuring steps are taken to remediate them – is crucial in identifying common problems. Vrieling emphasised that this is especially relevant now that COVID-19 has made it difficult for brands to visit factories.

By cooperating, the three organisations aim to increase the impact of the complaint helplines and to align existing structures. Together with civil society organisations such as FEMNET and Arisa, as well as local stakeholders, the MSIs and brands will evaluate the use of the Fair Wear mechanism and discuss needs and ideas towards a jointly usable system.

“This is an important step towards scaling effective complaints mechanisms through cooperation. We’re looking forward to the results of this first project phase and are already working on additional scaling options to provide more workers with access to complaints and remedy systems,” said Jürgen Janssen, head of the PST Secretariat.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)