Multi-national fashion brands are being incriminated for climate greenwashing cum declaring courageous decarbonisation promises without the required schemes to protect the frontline labourers highest affected. Critics warn the companies may forsake millions of garment workers in Bangladesh and other Asian manufacturing hubs to job cuts, heat shocks and economic uncertainties as they lack any solid and feasible plan for a Just Energy Transition (JET) to achieve clean energy.
A recent research study entitled ‘Missing Thread,’ released on June 2025 by ‘Business & Human Rights Resource Centre,’ a U.K.-based Labor Rights Organization, manifests that when over half of 65 global brands have promised to cut carbon emissions by 2050, none have formulated decarbonisation strategies that can actually safeguard workers from climate shocks or job insecurities in countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia and Vietnam. Of the eight companies with highest aspiring climate goals, only two – Inditex and Kering (owner of Gucci and Alexander McQueen) – have been righteous enough to publish transition plans through mentioning labourers. Capri, Hermes, Hugo Boss, H&M, LPP, Lululemon, Nike, and Primark have not adhered to this standard.
Conducted between August 2024 and April 2025, the study assessed the English-language environmental and social policy documents and other publicly available information of the world’s 65 largest apparel and footwear companies. A keyword search of companies’ full websites too was carried out in December 2024 (with data checked in February 2025). Also a number of Focus Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted with labourers and trade union leaders, NGOs, industry and government stakeholders, and environmental as well as labour specialists in Bangladesh and Cambodia in December 2024 and March 2025 respectively.
The findings, which include testimonial evidences from RMG sector workers in Bangladesh, manifest how in spite of chalking out highly aspiring net-zero goals and establishing ‘green’ factories, that the eminent fashion brands are squeezing their duties to supply chain workers. Thus, they fail to maintain fundamental labour rights and the cost of climate action gets shifted very unjustly onto the most helpless section of the workers.
This is why the labour rights organizations like the ‘Business & Human Resource Centre’ and others across the globe today implore brands to interact with trade unions, help the suppliers on financial basis and integrate the doctrine of ‘freedom of association’ into climate plans as part of a Just Energy Transition (JET) to protect both people and the planet.
‘’Fashion is fuelling the economies of many Asia-region countries, including Bangladesh, but it has to be clean and fair. The livelihoods of millions of workers are dependent on this,’ observed Natalie Swan, Labour Rights Programme Manager at the Business & Human Resource Centre on one of her brief visits to Bangladesh on early July.
“The fashion industry’s climate targets mean little if the people who make its products are not taken into consideration. While urgent decarbonisation of the industry is crucial, companies are failing to recognise the ways in which this rapid process is likely to impact the human rights of workers in their supply chains,’ she elaborated.
Why the decarbonisation without including workers is a dangerous shortcut?
Asia, the largest continent of the world, generates more than 50% of total global garment production. This is why the labourers on production lines in Asia undergo both the direct effects of the climate emergency and pertinent risks to their incomes or livelihoods if the industry decarbonises when overlooking its duty to ensure decent work for the labourers.
“Decarbonisation done without workers as critical and creative partners is not a just transition, it’s a dangerous shortcut,’ Natalie observed.
“Brands must stop hiding behind greenwashing slogans and start seriously engaging workers and their trade unions, whose rights, livelihoods and safety are under threat from both climate change and the industry’s response to it. A just transition is not just a responsibility, it’s a critical opportunity to build a fairer, more resilient fashion industry that works for people and the planet," she added.
International Framework of Just Energy Transition (JET):
Originating from the workers’ movement in the decades of the eighties, the idea of JET delineates how climate action and the clean energy transition needs to be inclusive and egalitarian, endorsing that the labourers, communities and other disenfranchised groups should not be left behind or marginalized by industrial transformation.
JET in international agreements and standards:
The 2015 Paris Agreement, signed at COP 21, acknowledged the just transition and subsequent COP agreements are built on this inception point while COP 27 in 2022 witnessed the introduction of ‘Just Transition Work Programmes,’ underscoring social dialogue and social protection and the need of engaging workers and trade unions in the transition process.
The ILO’s 2016 guidelines for a just transition established a policy framework and practical tool for the transition to low carbon economies, which clearly underlines the necessary integration of decent work into decarbonisation process and strategy.
This framework, in addition, is supported by European Union instruments, including the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD).
Salient findings from the ‘Missing Thread’ report:
- 44 out of 65 brands promise to reduce emissions by 2030, but none inserts the lens of worker protection into those schemes,
- No fashion brand possesses a stand-alone JET policy,
- Only 08 brands refer JET doctrines in their environmental and social policies,
- Only 03 of 10 companies with larger climate plans refer workers at all,
- Out of 43 brands chalking out supplier emissions necessities, just 16 elaborate any direct or indirect financial help for suppliers,
- Only 11 companies refer to workers pertaining to the effects of climate change in their social policies, including human rights and health as well as safety principles.
- Just 10 companies recognize the critical health and safety topics like those of heat stress and only four companies possess elaborate guidance for suppliers.
- Only two companies- Canada Goose and VF Corp- refer to climate effects on the income generation activities or livelihoods of supply chain labourers.
Freedom of Association and JET:
Findings from Cambodia reveals that non-unionised RMG workers have to stay 50% more time at workplace within unsafe core body temperatures than unionised labourers, when pervasive union basing is making it more difficult for labourers to raise claims for installing effective cooling systems in factories by the employers or management. Interaction of fashion companies and their suppliers with trade unions and bona fide negotiation are pivotal in guaranteeing a just transitions.
Decarbonisation is workers’ business?
The colossal inequity of power within apparel and footwear supply chains since the pandemic days of COVID-19 till the US government’s proposed tariffs on garment-producing countries, refer to the probable and profound risks for workers from this industry transformation. But there are possible opportunities too, if the industry decides to derive them through ensuring JET on the basis of shared prosperity, due diligence and fair negotiations and endorsing better conditions for workers rather than shifting all the decarbonisation costs onto them.
Spotlight on Bangladesh and Cambodia
As two major states in the globe’s primary garment production regions of South and South-east Asia, Cambodia and Bangladesh offer effective lessons in terms of decarbonization and climate adaptation plans having impact upon the workers. In spite of frequently oppressive ambience for labour rights, both the states have legal frameworks that offer the right to ‘freedom of association’ and a huge trade union infrastructure. Both the states are also seriously exposed to climate change and depend largely on export-oriented garment manufacturing to sustain their national economies.
Blazing heat: The impact of climate change for RMG workers in Bangladesh and Cambodia
Labourers interviewed in the study ‘Missing Thread’ narrated how climate change is affecting them meantime:
Extensive health and safety impacts from heat and flooding: In Bangladesh, labourers reportedly have felt the pangs of rising heat in recent years, resulting in frequent fainting, itching skin and a sharp increase in diseases like typhoid and dengue as testimony of the major health impacts of workplace heat. Workers also in Cambodia endure in the heat, with factory temperatures allegedly increasing as high as 39 degree C during a 2022 heatwave. It results in exhaustion with lower productivity and wages to mass fainting. Labourers in Cambodia, in addition, underscored the effect of flooding connected to climate change, mentioning health and safety concerns like electric shocks, and the woes of slippery floors specially for pregnant, female workers.
Decline in earnings: Terrible heat takes toll on labourers’ productivity and makes it difficult for them to chase targets which cause a decline in wagers. They have also lost wages for suspension of factory operations after flooding.
Inadequacy of mitigation measures: Workers pondered over the inadequacy of heat mitigation measures in their respective factories (like fans, ventilation or even ample amount of drinking water) in both the states which exacerbates the effects of increasing heat. Although some employers offer jugs of saline solution on too hot and humid days in Bangladesh, but that’s not enough.
Heat stress beyond the factory threshold: The woes of heat in the factories is further exacerbated by heat in labourers’ houses for which they are not capable enough to maintain sustainable cooling systems. In Cambodia, labourers also narrated rising incidents of domestic violence along with labour disputes connected to heat stress.
Bangladesh: Major Study findings
- Heat-related health problems: Factory workers often endure lots of health hazards for extensive heat stress, resulting in fainting, itching skin and rise of disease like Typhoid and Dengue.
- Scanty recognition of heat stress from brands: Just ten companies out of surveyed 65 recognize the increasing health and safety issues of heat stress and ony four publish elaborate supply chain guidance on the issue.
- No substantial employers’ response to heat: Labourers report being left to bear the costs for their own mitigation – such as purchasing fans and taking initiatives for keeping hydrated- when employers mention costing challenges.
- Automation-linked job losses: More than 30% of workers have lost jobs for automation and they have logical apprehension that green transitions will augment job cuts if not dealt with egality and equity.
- Feminization of the transition: Female labourers seem to be least trained up in new technologies and more prone to losing jobs for automation with newly introduced technologies.
- Work skills training trap: Workers laid off for not having sufficient skills were never provided any opportunity to learn – and thus building a trap of exclusion and exploitation.
- Workers fail to derive benefits from productivity gains: Introduction of new machinery enhances outputs and profits, but workers suffer from higher target goals with unchanged or worsened working conditions cum ambience.
Why the fashion houses must ensure decarbonisation with workers’ prism?
The fashion industry is supposed to contribute more than 25% of total international greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It will consolidate extreme weather events like heatwaves and flooding in salient sourcing regions, hampering RMG production and putting the health and income of workers already living in a deplorable condition. This is why the undertaking of decarbonization strategies with adopting protection lens for the workers and communities can ensure a stronger, fairer and more resilient supply chains.
Recommendations:
1. For Buyers: Fashion brands must indoctrinate just transition principles into their basic business strategies- inclusive of the integration of ‘freedom of association’ in supplier factories.
2. Suppliers: Supplier factories must formulate and develop lucid climate mitigation and adaptation plans ti prioritise worker protection. Buyers and suppliers must help each other and reciprocate to secure financing for greener operations that sustain decent work and sustainable incomes.
3. Investors: Investors need to incorporate just transition and freedom of association pledges into their evaluation of portfolio companies' material risks. They can promote effective social dialogue and support the design and implementation of fair, worker-centred transition strategies.
4. Policymakers: Policymakers in buying countries must underscore due diligence on human rights and climate risks and meet climate finance commitments, including the COP29 $300bn goal.
The writer is a long tenured development activist, poet, author and translator. She can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected]
