Who makes your clothes?The preparation under the magnifying glass

The clothing industry represents an emblematic activity in the world and in our country. Together with the textile industry, to which it is productive and historically linked, it has simultaneously been one of the founders of the technological and economic revolution that took place in Europe in the 19th century, and a symbol of workers' struggles like the one on March 8. from 1857 when the seamstress women of New York went down in history after a brutal police repression. It is also an industry with its own martyrs, such as the almost 150 workers (almost all immigrant women) who died under fire in New York's “Triangle Shirtwaist” in 1911; the more than 1,100 who perished in the collapse of Rana Plaza in Bangladesh in 2013 or the 6 children and women from the Viale street workshop who died in Caballito (Buenos Aires) in 2006.

In Argentina, the clothing industry is also an emblem of the structural problems of the national industry and also of the rise and failure of public policies in each of its recurring economic cycles. From the sewing machines distributed by the Eva Perón Foundation to the current clandestine workshops, oscillating between import substitution and periodic liberalizing trade openings, the different productive actors and the State have led this activity to the present situation: a fragmented industry , relocated and in suspense in the face of international competition, which employs some 150,000 workers (the industry that generates the most jobs), of which approximately 70% are informal workers or entrepreneurs with low-quality jobs.

Although the working conditions of those who make our clothes tend to emerge sporadically on the public agenda in the form of isolated facts and with identifiable direct culprits, the reality is much more complex and structural, extending to all segments of the industry. Thus, it is possible to recognize, for example, as a constant in the sector its high levels of work intensity, with long hours (sometimes of more than 12 hours) and high pressure to produce, particularly in the months of greatest demand. This is demonstrated, for example, by the studies by Ariel Lieutier and Carla Degliantoni (2020) and Paula Salgado (2020) estimating that in "formal" workshops only 60% of workers have a normal working day, while among the unregistered this happens only for 30% of the seamstresses (which is why these production units are often referred to as "sweat shops").

From the point of view of income, the basic salary in the formal sector is always among the two lowest in the industry in the country, representing barely 60% of the industrial average. This figure is lower for unregistered workers, which means that approximately half have incomes below the minimum wage. This, in turn, is related to the way of making the payment, since it usually involves piecework, and in extreme situations, as indicated by the research by Ayelén Arcos (2020), the remuneration is made with vouchers or in kind, and even on account of providing accommodation and services.

To all this we must add other working conditions related to health and safety, such as those pointed out by Antonella Delmonte (2020): poor lighting, non-ergonomic equipment that over time generates problems in the spine and extremities, wiring electrical systems in poor condition, overcrowding and the absence of measures to prevent and put out fires.

All these situations are facilitated by being immersed in a productive network made up of complex subcontracting networks. Brands, true manufacturers without factories, appeal to labor outsourcing as a tool that aims to weaken workers in the sector in order to reduce hiring costs. Cases of companies with more than 40 direct suppliers have been surveyed, which, in turn, tend to derive part of their production to smaller workshops or home seamstresses. Both the Labor Contract Law (20,744) and the Home Work Law (12,713), which constitute minimum guarantees of labor rights, thus become difficult to apply to identify and punish those most responsible for informality and conditions work -and life- in the "clandestine workshops". Furthermore, since the criminal complaints initiated by the Viale street workshop fire, the business chambers insist on the need to "update this law to the current reality", which in practice would mean totally disassociating themselves from responsibility for the conditions of work in the workshops and factories to which they subcontract.

The issue also increases its relevance, given the existence of recent initiatives (such as those of the 2015-2019 national administration) that relaxed controls on informality, which tried to use this sector as a laboratory for labor flexibility policies ( such as the hours bank and the unemployment fund) and that they understood that a greater formalization of the workforce would only be achieved through the reduction of labor costs and the legitimization of the conditions summarized here.

Although this problem has attracted the attention of different specialists, policy designers and academics, it can be said that the sector has not received attention proportional to its relevance, and that knowledge about this industry is partial and fragmentary. In the first place, because both the studies carried out based on aggregated statistical information and the qualitative investigations do not allow us to understand the links that exist between all the phenomena analyzed and to think about them in a structural way. In fact, by starting from different sources of information, they often lead to divergent conclusions. Secondly, because the analyzes and public debate are characterized by a marked bias between those who promote trade liberalization and those who recommend the protection of the internal market. The former consider that this industry is unviable in its current state, and that it therefore requires a profound restructuring, without explaining what should be done with the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are occupied today. The latter, on the other hand, fail to explain how after a decade of active policies, the improvements in the level of activity, the generation of value and the recovery of salaried employment have not been enough to modify the figures for unregistered employment, the low quality of jobs and the inequality of a productive chain in which the glamorous world of fashion coexists with clandestinity and reduction to servitude.

The dimension of all these mentioned problems and their long cumulative trajectory do not admit simplistic analysis, nor the concealment of the contradictions that are habitually incurred in the discourses on the sector. If you want to elaborate answers to these complex problems that the activity has, it is therefore necessary to explore the multiple dimensions that cross its plot of actors, relationships and processes and transcend short-term perspectives to reflect on the structural problems that cross our industrial development.

How the clothing industry works

The clothing industry is marked by a strong procyclicality, which makes it extremely dependent on the evolution of aggregate demand, suffering like few falls in consumption that have characterized different recessive periods such as the one that occurred between 1996-2002, or between 2015-2019. The "habitus" (provisions) developed by economic agents throughout this changing productive history, added to the "flexible" structure of the chain, explains why in these situations businessmen find greater incentives and opportunities to replace labor local for import.

It is for this reason that a liberalization of trade, eliminating tariff and para-tariff barriers to imports, would have as its first consequence the loss of employment in the most fragile links of the chain (workshops, household seamstresses) and in a second stage also from the manufacturers (who are usually not always aware of their collaboration with this consequence). This dynamic can be easily verified by observing what happened in other producing countries and there are plenty of reasons to think that in the current international context this scenario becomes even more likely. A sample of this effect can also be seen in Argentina, since since 2016 the combination of the initial opening of imports and the drop in purchasing power generated not only a decrease in employment and the closure of production units, but also a shift in consumption towards other actors, such as supermarkets, who mostly sell low-cost imported garments with low symbolic value.

The discourse that usually naturalizes these rules of the game and thus promotes de-industrialization by considering this activity as uncompetitive has many adherents, but it hides various problems that can be pointed out with empirical data coming in many cases from the productive models to which are usually given as an example. The first aspect that deserves to be questioned is the legitimacy of the "competition" that this industry faces, something that is often minimized or masked. It can only be explained as a consequence of a convinced or forced adherence to the rules of the new international division of labor imposed by the central countries, that a country that legally guarantees certain basic rights to its workers admits as fair the competition of products that according to the competent international organizations are elaborated under standards that would be inadmissible locally. Global production today is found in countries where there are not only low wages or economies of scale, but where capital minimizes the risk of supply chain disruptions by limiting worker mobilization and organization. Thus, when importing garments from these countries, we accept labor control regimes and restrictions on freedom of association due to single-party control (such as Vietnam or China) or where there are multiple violations of labor rights through the use of intimidation and violence by part of the employers (such as Honduras, El Salvador or Colombia) (Anner, 2015). In many of these countries, seamstresses have been arrested during organized strikes to demand better wages and many have even been killed during their repression, such as the 5 Cambodian workers in 2014 or the Bengali worker killed in January 2019. We also import regime garments where high unemployment and low wages that are well below the basic needs of a household control (in Ethiopia, one of the industry's new stars, workers can get as much as $25 a month from minimum salary).

Although there have been numerous private initiatives addressed from the philosophy of corporate social responsibility, unilateral monitoring has proven not to be enough to regulate these processes. Undoubtedly, therefore, the States must have an active presence on this point, not only within their jurisdiction but also promoting the incorporation of clauses for the protection of labor rights in international trade agreements (an alternative on which there are already precedents in the sector). By the way, this is something reprehensible not only for States, but also for consumers who, thanks to the long-studied process of "fetishization", are able to separate the act of buying a "good offer" from the production conditions to which they are subjected. that they would likely find unacceptable (as seen in many global campaigns to improve consumer practices).

In addition to being a clearly unfair competition in ethical terms, a second aspect is related to the direct impact it generates on local employment and especially on particularly vulnerable populations (especially poor and migrant women) who have historically been the driving force of work in this industry. In Argentina, this sector is the most relevant of the entire industry in terms of employment and, in general, those who advocate that the country specialize in activities for which there are "comparative advantages" tend to suggest that the solution to unemployment lies in the "reconversion" of the labor force employed in this activity. To contrast this argument, it is interesting to observe the effect that has occurred in other countries that have already gone through the destruction of their clothing industry, in which, even with specific policies, this reconversion is no more than a euphemistic term to describe unemployment and the precariousness of employed workers (as can be observed, for example, from the "Displaced Workers Survey" of the United States).

Finally, the process of destruction of the industry, in addition to its short-term consequences, has other effects that are also tended to be minimized by those who are unaware that in the economy not all decisions are “reversible”. If the reconversion of individuals is difficult, it is much more so in the case of the organizational capacities of the links that are lost in a productive chain. This happened, for example, in the 1990s, when not only was the current socio-technical regime consolidated, but also fundamental links were lost, such as the production of certain inputs (fabrics, threads, etc.) and also the manufacture of capital goods. . A notable case is precisely that of sewing machines: at the beginning of the 1950s there were ten companies that manufactured them (Gardini, Talleres Metalúrgicos San Francisco, Establecimientos Sequenza, Necchi Argentina, among others), most of which disappeared. in the 1970s and whose last representative was Macoser SA (which began by manufacturing its own machines and in the 80s became a representative of Singer), stopped doing so in 2019 (Girbal-Blacha, 2006).

An additional consequence of this disappearance of companies in various links of the chain is the consequent increase in technological dependence. If it is not possible or desirable to recompose these productive segments, it must be accepted that this makes the administration of variables related to international trade (tariff policy, exchange rate, etc.) more complex, forcing an intelligent balance between the protection of final products with opening versus intermediate ones.

All the arguments presented so far reveal that in a macroeconomic scenario like the current one, and as long as radical changes in technology or consumption are not generated (which could modify the socio-technical system), the importance that this sector has In terms of employment, it requires measures capable of sustaining domestic demand, promoting the emergence of input manufacturers and an intelligent policy of protection against imports.

However, these initiatives are necessary but not sufficient to generate a genuine process of industrial development. Full proof of these limitations of the aforementioned macroeconomic policies is what happened in the country in the post-convertibility period. Indeed, the combination of both strategies (increased consumption, selective protection measures) managed to reactivate national clothing production, but did not generate relevant impacts on aspects such as its export capacity, its technological dependence, the better distribution of income (concentrated in a group of input supplier agents, major brands, commercial and financial sectors) or the improvement of the quality of work in the chain (Schorr, 2013).

One of the hypotheses we support here is that this has happened because between 2003 and 2015 there was probably excessive confidence in the effects of macroeconomic policy, coupled with the absence or limitations of policies at the mesoeconomic level. Thus the sector grew, but without modifying structural aspects of its socio-technical regime (particularly key aspects such as the disarticulation of production or the weakness of collective institutions) or deploying its innovative potential in those segments that could do so. In this way, not only was there no progress in improving the aforementioned problems, but the consolidation of the dominant socio-technical regime generated a reinforcement of its productive system and the reproduction of its negative consequences.

Probably due to this limited conception, even in the cited period it cannot be said that there was a comprehensive industrial development policy, but rather a heterogeneous and not always coherent and articulated conglomerate of public and private programs and initiatives. For this reason, given that fragmentation and disarticulation is one of the problems of the sector, but it is also for support policies and programs, a first guideline for them should include the constitution of institutionalized multi-stakeholder spaces that allow the articulation and orientation of the different programs and initiatives, both nationally and territorially. These spaces should include the main State agencies, but also representatives of the workers and the different segments that make up the industry, and should aim to design and evaluate medium- and long-term development strategies.

These lines of action could encounter major barriers, since some imply radical changes that require strong political will to face their costs. However, changing a structural situation such as the one described and directing it on a path of genuine industrial development with decent work requires decisive multidimensional and multi-stakeholder measures. We believe that an emblematic activity such as this, due to its contribution to job creation and the satisfaction of the basic needs of the population, but also due to its potential for the development of creativity, design and innovation, deserves it.

-Andrés Matta is a doctor in Economic Sciences, professor and researcher at the National University of Córdoba. Jerónimo Montero Bressán is a doctor in Geography, researcher and teacher. They are compilers of the book “Who makes your clothes? Studies on the clothing industry in Argentina” (Prometeo).

by Andrés Matta and Jerónimo Montero Bressán