Fast Fashion

Group A: Pablo Rojas, Ahmer Bhurgri, Vlad Situ, Elizabeth Diamantopolous, Karl Dingfield, Hany Ibrahim

In reflection to the fast fashion inputs, our group selected the question – should fashion brand companies be responsible for the supply chain and how far should this responsibility extend?

The unintended impact of the “fast fashion” supply chain is that the end consumer and sometimes parts of the business itself are divorced from the manufacturing realities in the production process which are often located in a different country. This leads to these group to more easily be removed from their impacts which manifests itself in a lack of empathy toward labourers who are affected by inhumane and dangerous working conditions in their home countries.

Our reflection focused on the North American standard of fast fashion, where it was defined by large volume-low cost,  combined with large scale operation and agile supply-chain (i.e. Just-In-Time manufacturing) with multiple subcontracted suppliers.

Applying the lenses of Care Ethics and Justice Ethics, we posit that the onus of responsibility for workers’ conditions lies squarely with the fashion houses. This responsibility extends to every stage in the production process including international brokers, and manufacturers. As a minimum they must ensure that their stakeholders and workers are not harmed.

From a Care ethics perspective, it is imperative that fashion houses go above what is obligatory to improve the lives of others, that they be forthright and honest, that they relate to people in commendable ways (caring, and touching), and act out of concern to behave ethically. As fashion companies become more and more vertically integrated design brands have direct power to influence the culture in their suppliers and ensure they extend the ethical standards and empathy to one another down throughout the entire chain.  From a Distributive Justice Ethics perspective the power to ensure a fair system extends across the supply chain is again set by the top player in it, the brand house who sets out procurement policies and arbitration processes for the rules governing the supply system itself. These rules in the latter viewpoint would ensure that no matter where one were to participate there would be a fair and equitable distribution of opportunity and protection for every member.

The higher ethical codes in the fashion house’s home country can be extended through the supply chain practically through the procurement policies it choses, the close integration between supplier and brand house to influence culture and severe penalization of non complying suppliers. These tactics can be used to ensure standards of supplier minimum wage, maximum overtime, minimum worker age as well as basic health and safety standards would ripple down the chain.

These positive and well aligned ethical concepts are necessary and can be practically implemented into action through the brand house’s policies and rules of business to avoid negative detractions which can create pain and suffering and often result in inhumane and dangerous conditions for stakeholders. While the average consumer still remains disconnected towards the supply chain process, many of these companies continue to ignore the basic rights and decencies of factory workers. While we believe that this is inexcusable, large corporations may further rationalize this type of employment and working conditions simply to maintain their bottom line and market share.  Regardless of the company's rationalization, by ignoring the rights of others to obtain company objectives, these actions continue to expose a significant portion of the workforce to brutal, cruel and dangerous work-environments.