Glassons slated by ethical fashion report

Glassons has rated poorly for the worker's rights of those in the company's supply chain. Photo: Greg Bowker.

Women's fashion retailer Glassons has received a dismal overall D-minus rating in a new report designed to expose the exploitation of workers in the industry.

The Truth Behind the Barcode: Australian Fashion Report 2015 surveyed 219 fashion brands on their policies, traceability and transparency, monitoring and training, and workers' rights.

The grades indicate the extent to which a company has traced its suppliers and established systems throughout its supply chain that can enable it to prevent and address worker exploitation and modern slavery, the report states.

Glassons received an F ranking for all but the policies category, for which it was ranked D-plus.

The clothing chain's poor ranking follows a string of previous controversies for the clothing chain, including using mannequins with their ribs showing to advertise swimwear, and an ad featuring a woman riding a bull which attracted the ire of animal rights groups.

A Glassons spokeswoman said the company would not be commenting on the report.

The report was created by Baptist World Aid Australia in the wake of the 2013 Rana Plaza factory collapse in Bangladesh - in which 1100 workers lost their lives.

"The event sparked the collective conscience of consumers, retailers, investors and governments to know more about the people producing our clothes and how they are treated," the report states.

Although there were promising signs for the fashion industry, significant problems remained, it said.

The report said the industry was still categorised by poverty level wages with a mere 12 per cent of companies able to demonstrate any action towards paying wages above the legal minimum.

Despite the minimum wage in Bangladesh increasing by 75 per cent since the
fatal Rana Plaza collapse in 2013, it still had the lowest minimum wage in the world, it said.

The report also highlighted a lack of transparency, claiming 91 per cent of companies didn't know where all their cotton came from.

"If companies don't know how and where their products are made, then there's no
way for them to ensure that their workers are protected," the report's authors stated.

Although there were signs of progress, the report said many of the worst overall performers were iconic Australian fashion brands including the Just Group (owner of Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Dotti, Peter Alexander and Portmans), fast retail brands like Ally, Valley Girl, Temt and Industrie, and low cost suppliers like Lowes and Best & Less.

"These companies have all received D or F grades.

"We could find little evidence that any of these fashion retailers were doing much, if anything, to protect workers overseas," the report's authors stated.

"Many of them had little or no publicly available information and/or didn't respond to any of our requests to engage with the research process."

Companies that had made significant improvements included Kmart - which released a complete list of its direct suppliers, the Cotton On Group - which had taken steps to identify suppliers deeper in their supply chain - and H&M, Zara, Country Road and the Sussan Group, which have made efforts to paying better wages for overseas workers, the report said.

Read the full report here: