Jo Wood steps up sweatshops war
Strictly star picture boosts largest ethical fashion drive
Oct 26th, 2009
Jo makes her views known
Television star and organic beauty expert, Jo Wood, today joined Britons who have posed for photographs to support the biggest-ever call for British government action to stop fashion retailers exploiting overseas workers.
Read Daisy’s interview with Jo
She has boosted a drive for 50,000 names demanding that UK prime minister Gordon Brown regulates the industry.
The former model, who now runs Jo Wood Organics, selling organic skin care products, features among thousands of people already signed up to the Love Fashion Hate Sweatshops campaign run by the anti-poverty charity War on Want.
Jo was shocked by garment workers’ hardship when she visited the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka with fair trade fashion company People Tree.
She said: “The conditions that they lived in in the slums were appalling: the rubbish, the smell and the poverty. Up to six people live in a tin room on bamboo stilts above heaps of rubbish. Yet I was humbled by the people and their attitudes.”
People can add their names and pictures on the campaign’s website at www.lovefashionhatesweatshops.org
According to War on Want research, workers making clothes for Primark, Tesco and Asda factories in Dhaka received on average only £19.16 (2280 taka) a month, under half a living wage. Some employees were paid only the minimum wage, £13.97 (1663 taka) a month, far less than the £44.82 (5333 taka) needed to escape dire hardship.
The vast majority of employees live in small, crowded shacks, many of which lack plumbing and adequate washing facilities. Though forced overtime is illegal in Bangladesh, employees said they were made to toil extra hours, often unpaid.
Workers complained that in the fast fashion rush to produce the latest styles, many of them suffered verbal and physical abuse as they struggled to meet unrealistic targets. Yet the Dhaka workers said none of their factories was unionised.
