The true cost of fast fashion … We now expose the harsh conditions in the warehouses dispatching your online fashion orders. We’re inside the multi-million-pound business where having a sick child could cost you your job. Dispatches: Undercover: Britain’s Cheap Clothes II
It’s boomtime in Boohoo … Every order comes through their Burnley warehouse … Twelve-hour shifts … Agency recruits don’t have the same rights as company staff … ‘It’s three strikes and you’re out’ … ibid.
40th anniversary of the Great GM Sit-Down Strike: ‘… faced the buckshot, faced the teargas, this armband still has the teargas on it. The Women’s Emergency Brigade of Flint, Michigan, made American history …’ With Banners & Babies: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade, conference speaker, 1979
We were the pioneers of the labour movement. ibid. striker
The more you produced, the more likely you would keep their job. ibid.
The foremen were using the girls and holding it over their heads that if they didn’t do what they wanted to do, they wouldn’t have a job. ibid.
That’s all we had in Flint, Michigan – churches and bars. ibid.
We met in a little coalshed. ibid.
They would have done anything to turn one against the other. ibid.
That’s when we decided to form the Women’s Auxiliary. ibid.
General Motors goons – our lives were in danger – they actually prepared with guns. ibid.
First they turned the heat off on ’em, then they turned the water off on ’em. ibid.
The victory was won and the UAW was born. ibid.
The most important of these demonstrations – the occupation of the factories. The Hour of the Furnaces II, 1968
The General Motors Moraine Assembly Plant opened in 1981 near Dayton, Ohio. The Moraine Assembly Plant is bigger than the US Pentagon. The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant, 2008
‘They’re closing our plant; this is our plant … here comes the last truck.’ ibid. worker
‘Merry fucking Christmas. See ya.’ ibid.
It takes 3 days to make a vehicle. The plant makes 280,000 trucks a year. 2,200 people work at the Plant, supervised by 200 managers. ibid.
Every auto plant job creates 5 to 7 additional jobs. The closing of the plant causes the lost of over 10,000 jobs in the community. ibid.
This is a story about clothing. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make these clothes, and the impact that it’s having on our world. It’s a story about greed and fear, power and poverty. The True Cost, 2015
Today we only make about 3% and the other 97% is outsourced. ibid.
Cutting corners and disregarding safety measures have become an accepted part of doing business in this new model. ibid.
‘An eight-storey building has collapsed near the capital of Dhaka killing more than seventy people.’ ibid. news
Rana Plaza: ‘Two weeks after the catastrophe and the death toll now stands at a staggering of 931 making it the worst garment industry disaster in history.’ ibid.
‘Bangladesh is now the second largest apparel exporter after China … Unions have limited power.’ ibid.
‘I have formed a union at work … We had an altercation with the managers. After the altercation, managers closed the door, 30-40 attacked us and beat us up.’ ibid. garment union president
The most labour-dependent industry on earth. ibid.
Over 80 billion pieces of new clothing each year. ibid.
Fashion today is the number two most polluting industry on Earth, second only to the oil industry. ibid.
A perfectly engineered nightmare for the workers trapped inside. ibid.
Cockerill’s design was a straight steal which took the rollers from the Arkwright Water Frame and the clasp and carriage from the Spinning Jenny. He was the first man to successfully make a spinning machine that spun short-fibred wool ... He called it The Mule. The Fred Dibnah Story e1: Beginnings, BBC 1996
By 1813 William Cockerill’s manufacturing empire employed fifty blacksmiths and fifteen hundred wool workers. ibid.
By 1830 Cockerill was the largest integrated company in Europe. Maybe even the world. ibid.
When we’ve finished with the boiler we always have to blow it down: this is to get rid of the sediment which forms in the bottom. Fred Dibnah’s Industrial Age e2: Mills & Factories, BBC 2009
Arkwright built himself a factory in Derbyshire powered by water to house these machines. And he is really regarded as the father of the factory system. ibid.
Slapped, abused, child workers suffering attacks on the production line; undercover for the first time we reveal the hidden face of the Bangladesh sweatshops producing clothes for retailers from around the world. Exposure s3e6: Fashion Factories Undercover, ITV 2014
A world of daily violence, verbal abuse and constant intense pressure to meet deadlines. ibid.
Rana Plaza: 24 hours earlier officials had ordered the building to be evacuated while checks were carried out … forced in by their managers. ibid.
‘God gave us hands so we have to work. Since we are here we have to work. Everybody works 12 hours … The machines have to be controlled, either by using a button or the brain.’ Machines, worker, 2017
‘Working on the wheel pays Rs. 210 (2USD) per shift.’ ibid.
‘How would the wealthy know the problems of the poor?’ ibid.
‘If the workers unite, they can get the bosses to yield.’ ibid.
‘I don’t know anything about the boss.’ ibid.
Honolulu, Hawaii: The trap of a heartless human trafficker: Kil-Soo Lee ran a south-Pacific sweatshop … The women at Kil-Soo Lee’s garment factory were prisoners of their heartless boss. Very Bad Men s2e2: The Inhuman Trafficker, 2007
In the 19th century the world was transformed by a powerful idea: a belief among Europeans that their civilisation represented the pinnacle of human progress. It was idea driven by the modernising forces of science and industry. David Olusoga, Civilisation s1e8: The Cult of Progress, BBC 2018
The Industrial Revolution first emerged in the English Midlands. Its most potent symbol was a new kind of architecture: the factory ... Industry forced nature to bow before the ambitions of mankind. But from now on industry would also demand human beings submit to the needs of the machine, working in shifts around the shop. ibid.
Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres: The Turkish Bath 1863: These were European fantasies. ibid.
J M W Turner: Dudley Worcestershire 1832: The great thinker and art critic John Ruskin saw in the picture an indictment of how the old way of life was being destroyed by the factory and the machine. ibid.
At its peak, the Lancashire cotton industry had over 250,000 powered looms. How the Victorians Built Britain s1e4: The Birth of the Machines, Channel 5 2018
The mill workers lived a grim life. ibid.
Hidden deep in the forests of Germany, concealed inside vast mountains, lie the remains of one of the most intriguing engineering projects of World War II: vast underground factories built for the world’s first operational jet fighter. This is the incredible story of the ME262. Hitler’s Secret Underground Factory aka Nazi Megastructures, Channel 5 2019
Hitler’s new megaweapon: the Messerschmitt ME262 … The Germans launched the world’s first jet aircraft. ibid.
December 23 2008: When the GM plant closed in Dayton, Ohio, over 10,000 local jobs were lost. In 2010 Chinese factories began ramping up investment in US manufacturing, re-opening shuttered American factories. American Factory, Netflix 2019
What we’re doing is melding two cultures together … Plenty of opportunities. ibid. company presenter
Audience question: Is this a union shop?
Presenter: We are not. It is our desire to not be. ibid.
They’re pretty slow. They have fat fingers. We keep training them over and over. ibid. supervisor to chairman
We don’t want to see the union developing here … If a union comes, I’m shutting down. ibid. chairman
The conditions are not favourable. Doing the same thing over and over again. That wears on you. Body, mind and the soul – sometimes you think, Why am I doing this? You think about whether you have the stamina and the will to do this type of job. ibid. worker
American workers are not efficient and output is low. ibid. Chinese supervisor
There have been eleven safety complaints filed against Fuyao. ibid. television news