Blog

June 14, 2022

During Covid-19, demand for garments and textiles plunged. Many brands cancelled orders or refused to pay for finished goods, forcing massive layoffs and deepening poverty for millions of workers.

The pandemic laid bare the unsustainability of global supply chains: the unfair distribution of risks that allows global brands to profit while workers experience extensive wage theft, and the lack of adequate social protection systems in many producing countries. Social protection is a human right; it also helps prevent poverty and inequality, is essential to resilient supply chains and can reduce risks for companies and investors.

Join us for a webinar hosted by LAPFF to discuss social protection – what it is, why it matters to workers, companies and investors – and hear directly from two garment workers in Thailand who have struggled to recover wages owed them by a major western brand. We’ll also discuss a new model of supply chain industrial relations based on a global and enforceable collective bargaining agreement between trade unions, buyers and suppliers on a social protection bridging fund for garment workers.

Speakers include:

• Jitnawatcharee Panad, President, Triumph International Thailand Labour Union
• Vasana Khonghintang, Vice President, Triumph International Thailand Labour Union
• Beatrice di Padua, Project Officer, Economic and Social Policy, ITUC
• Christina Hajagos-Clausen, Director, Textile & Garment Industry, IndustriALL Global Union
• Liz Umlas, Senior Advisor, IndustriALL Global Union