Fast Fashion: The Real Costs Of Your Cheapest Clothing

“Get it, it’s cheap”, a common, transparent phrase spoken to only impel and exhaust thousands of innocent workers in a crowded, congested factory. For centuries, the fashion industry has consistently succeeded in feeding the fashionable desires of its populous rack of consumers with the deliverance of the newest and latest trends. Inhabiting as a timeless craze, runway fashion has since transitioned from the catwalk to department stores within seconds, and soon reaching a home in an occupied closet full of other boundless articles of clothing. The rapid growth of fast fashion has demanded quantity over quality, in which resulting in the practice of sweatshops. A sweatshop, as defined by Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is a shop or factory in which

Knowingly hidden from the public’s eye, sweatshop factories happen to hold a relatively high degree of existence in the garment industry. In fact, many well-known companies and manufacturers such as Forever 21, H&M, Old Navy, and Zara depend on the performance of sweatshop workers to mass produce their merchandise out to their eager customers (“Fast Fashion: The Real Costs of Your Cheapest Clothes”). Through the exercise of sweatshops, brand name clothing retailers are able to efficiently feed the constant hunger for inexpensive, bargain priced clothes while keeping production costs low and still maximizing profits. Therefore, the commonality of sweatshop warehouses in the garment industry seems to only increase and multiply, as almost all clothing retailers now use sweatshop labor to manufacture their goods (“Sweatshops”). To satisfy customer needs and maintaining gratification, the chase to fast fashion becomes a competitive race to see who can achieve the cheapest price tag out on the shopping racks. With the intention to seek a promised continuance of customers, the frenzy of low-cost clothing at a cut-rate price is fueled and made possible by outsourcing sweatshop factories to developing countries such as Bangladesh, China and Cambodia, where wages are kept low, and working conditions are less regulated

While on the other end of the spectrum, garment industry workers are succumbed to dark and cramped workspaces with little ventilation, vulnerability to fire hazards, accidents, and alarming enough, physical abuse from the hands of bosses. Regarding the poor conditions and environment, regular breaks, safety equipment, overtime pay, and paid sick leave are all nonexistent, which are conditions taken for granted by employees in modern developed countries (“Sweatshops”). The nature of working in a sweatshop factory speaks for labor exploitation as needs of safety standards are unmet, which serves for a practice of violation in labor laws. Brand name retailers are aware of the proceedings, but claim no responsibility for the working conditions at their suppliers’ factories and willingly ignore complaints about violations of basic wage and working hour laws (Kornberg). The dependency on sweatshop labor has tremendously grown, where now “Only two percent of our clothing is dependable for having decent working conditions for all of its employees and proper compensation for work” (“Fast Fashion: The Real Costs of Your Cheapest Clothes”). As more manufacturers outsource sweatshop factories to developing countries, the chances for apparel companies to cheat against labor and human