The Labor Behind the Label

World

By La Rainne Pasion
human rights, labor rights, fashion, globalization

An investigation into workers' rights and the global fashion supply chain

The Labor Behind the Label is a project that began from a writing assignment in my Human Rights and Global Fashion course. We were asked to trace the production path of a garment of our choosing as far back as we could, i.e. from the making of the materials to the finished product’s arrival into our wardrobes. The clothing I chose was a shirt I bought in the summer of 2018 near a Philippine factory where the fabric was printed. The brand was Lululemon, a company known for its form-fitting, flexible yoga pants but more recently also for its commitment to “ethical” and “sustainable” practices. I chose the shirt precisely so that, in my paper, I could answer a question related to this new branding: Is Lululemon a sustainable label, or is it a stretch (pun intended) to call them ethical?

Finding out about the process my shirt went through to get to me wasn’t easy. I tried to get information from customer service, who advised me to message their supply chain managers on LinkedIn (spoiler: they did not respond). I also attempted to search supply chain maps online and registered identification number databases, but no website had created any maps of Lululemon’s production facilities, and, curiously, my shirt’s tag did not display an RN number. As a result, the production path I had deduced is partly speculative—but the story it told was still fascinating and one that I really wanted to represent visually.

I started with a simple map of Lululemon’s production facilities above but knew I wanted to contextualize these factories within many brands’ push to shift manufacturing to the Global South. So, I decided to create The Labor Behind the Label to dig deeper into Lululemon’s labor practices and, more generally, patterns surrounding working conditions around the world. The resulting project sets Lululemon factories against the background of the International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) 2019 Global Rights Index, as seen below. This allows the viewer to more clearly recognize where labor rights are often violated and to what extent those countries are represented in Lululemon’s supply chain.

In order to build the map, I geocoded each facility listed in a document detailing Lululemon’s materials, intermediate processing, and finishing facilities. I also created a database from a 62-page PDF report published by the ITUC on their rankings of the working conditions in each country. These two sets of data became the major ‘story-tellers’ of my map.

Since I also wanted to illustrate both regional and global patterns on labor rights, I turned the point data into GeoJSON format and created marker clusters. This made it easier to tell where manufacturing activity was concentrated and to identify certain areas or continents that have more factories than others, such as Asia and the Pacific.

One of the non-coding-related aspects that made putting this project together challenging was how frustrating it was to find information on my own shirt’s production path. I reflected that this experience is also what makes it hard for us consumers to know about the labor that goes behind our clothes’ labels. In order to make this process easier for others and to encourage more awareness in this field, I linked a printable PDF on my website of tips for finding the production path of your garments. My hope for future iterations of this project is to include a form to submit your own findings and turn the map into a more collaborative tool.

A big lesson I learned from my research is that companies need to take bigger and clearer measures to guarantee the well-being, empowerment, and fair compensation of its garment workers. Ultimately, I hope The Labor Behind the Label encourages viewers to think more critically about their consumption habits and to remember that, no matter where you source your wardrobe, there is a human element to these clothes that shouldn’t be ignored.