Fashion brands urged to establish workplace protections from extreme heat: 'What stood out most about the solutions offered by workers … was the simplicity'

The workers keeping supply chains running for some of the world's top clothing and home goods companies are suffering the impacts as temperatures rise in Pakistan and globally, driven by the proliferation of heat-trapping pollution.

Already well-known for its outsized role in overconsumption, water contamination, and heat-trapping pollution, the fashion industry has now been highlighted in a new report from Climate Rights International for lacking effective workplace protections from extreme heat. 

The report details hazards taking place at factories and mills that do business with companies including H&M, Inditex (Zara), GAP, ASOS, and IKEA, according to a CRI press release. With a portion of the research documenting the experiences of women workers, author Cara Schulte told Climate, Gendered that many face the "dual burden of paid and domestic labor."

"The women CRI spoke with," the researcher wrote CG via email, "described experiencing the same severe heat impacts as their male colleagues inside factories and mills — fainting, dehydration, wage losses — but then they also spoke about going home to prepare food for their families in kitchens that were just as hot. One of the women described it as a 'constant cycle' that left almost no time for recovery."

Schulte said CRI's findings in Karachi resonated with her past research into similar working conditions elsewhere.

"Women in Bangladesh’s garment hubs also pointed out similar gender-specific challenges, and many spoke about how women’s traditional clothing often made them hotter or prevented them from cooling down in the same ways men can."

Separately, in an October report investigating health risks faced by pregnant farm workers laboring in intense heat in the United States, one advocate told the Associated Press that some women workers wear extra clothing as protection from sexual assault, raising their risks of overheating. The same report noted that immigrant women in the sector don't always feel safe speaking up about heat exposure concerns, fearing workplace and even political repercussions. 

Schulte told CG that the women CRI spoke with in Karachi "described unequal treatment on the job, including limits on their ability to raise complaints or differing access to the same adaptation tools as men."

But they also offered strategies. 

"What stood out most about the solutions offered by workers in both Karachi and Dhaka was the simplicity," Schulte noted. "We often think of climate change as an abstract environmental problem requiring complex or costly solutions. But the workers we spoke with don't see it that way."

Among the workers' suggestions for mitigating their risks of overheating? Access to cold drinking water. Breaks to rest for 10 minutes at a time. 

Broader changes are likely called for, but the workers' ideas could be welcome steps.

"The bottom line is that workers need workplaces that don’t punish them for taking steps to protect their health, and brands have a responsibility to support suppliers in achieving that," Schulte said.

Consumers may bear some responsibility too. And with women as of 2024 reportedly set to control or influence around 75% of discretionary spending, including purchases from popular fashion and home decor brands, could this massive global buying power be used in service of some intersectional feminism?

Schulte emphasized that "the conditions [CRI] documented are the result of decisions made by brands and policymakers, and so the solution will ultimately need to come from corporate and government stakeholders." But she went on to note that "women shoppers and consumers more broadly can definitely play a supporting role."

By choosing to purchase from companies that authentically reflect their values and calling out companies that don't, consumers could help hold brands accountable for their corporate climate commitments and climate-conscious marketing, Schulte told CG. 

"It’s hard to imagine someone feeling good about buying a sweater or a pair of jeans if they’d seen a worker vomit or faint in the heat while making it," she said. Schulte continued, "Brands that market themselves to women or use language about women’s empowerment in their advertising should be expected to extend those same values to the women in their supply chains. Consumers are right to question that disconnect, and in doing so they can help push companies toward meaningful reform."

Published on December 3, the CRI report comes as the Clean Clothes Campaign — a network of over 200 organizations, operating in over 45 countries — calls on fashion brands to stand by workers in the wake of devastating floods across Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Malaysia. The network has urged companies to protect wages, severance payments, and worker safety.