Amnesty International delivered a scathing indictment of the global garment industry in a pair of reports released on Thursday, marking its first-ever examination of the sector.
The human-rights organisation, best known for campaigning against government oppression and advocating for political prisoners, accused major fashion brands of profiting from a supply chain where workers who attempt to unionise are routinely threatened, dismissed or violently repressed.
The organisation said global fashion companies have effectively helped sustain unjust conditions by operating with factory owners and governments that suppress labour rights, enabling a system in which anti-union practices and worker intimidation are allowed to flourish.
“These findings point to an unholy alliance,” said Amnesty’s secretary general, Agnès Callamard, in a statement. The industry has “thrived for decades on the exploitation of a grossly underpaid, overworked and mostly female workforce,” she added.
In its two companion reports on the garment sector — “Stitched Up” and “Abandoned by Fashion” — the rights group states that the denial of “freedom of association,” denoting workers’ ability to form and join organisations of choice, remains entrenched in the global apparel sector’s business model.
Across 88 interviews in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, workers described a pervasive “climate of fear,” where the basic act of joining a union could lead to harassment, firing or physical attacks. Women, who dominate the industry’s workforce, reported verbal, physical and sexual abuse with little access to justice.
Across the four major sourcing countries, Amnesty documented structural barriers that make unionising nearly impossible.
In Bangladesh’s special economic zones, where much of the country’s garment production is concentrated, unions are largely banned. Meanwhile, in India millions of garment workers are excluded from labour laws and thus union rights. In Pakistan and Sri Lanka, workers attempting to organise face legal barriers, intimidation by supervisors or reprisals that include dismissals and threats.
Amnesty’s findings also highlight how brands’ human-rights policies fall short in practice. The group says many companies rely on superficial due-diligence systems and supplier codes of conduct that function as “tick-box” exercises, allowing opaque supply chains to flourish. Weak or nonexistent legislation in key markets enables brands to source from factories and governments that fail to address — and in some cases actively suppress — collective bargaining. Even in jurisdictions where due-diligence laws exist, Amnesty notes that enforcement remains inconsistent.
Amnesty’s South Asia team turned its attention to the garment industry after pandemic-era order cancellations triggered mass layoffs and reduced hours, leaving millions of predominantly female garment workers in sudden precarity.
The reports notably scrutinise the role of global brands in the system of repression they document, highlighting a disconnect between public commitments and factory-level realities. Amnesty surveyed 21 major fashion companies, finding that only six — Adidas, Asos, Uniqlo-owner Fast Retailing, Inditex, Primark and German retail conglomerate Otto Group — provided full responses to detailed questions about human-rights policies and oversight.
Marks & Spencer and Walmart offered partial information. Brands including H&M, Next and Gap, among a few others, failed to provide substantive data, according to Amnesty’s analysis.
In response to the reports, H&M said it “acknowledge[s] that we should have answered this specific survey from Amnesty International back in 2023” and that it finds the organisation’s findings “concerning,” noting they are “something that all brands working with global supply chains must tackle jointly.”
Marks & Spencer, Walmart, Next and Gap did not provide comments before the time of publication.
Across all 21 companies, supplier codes of conduct universally affirmed workers’ right to freedom of association. Yet Amnesty said it found “very few” genuinely independent unions operating in the factories supplying these brands — an indicator that commitments on paper are not translating into protections for workers. Interviewees described immediate retaliation when trying to join or form unions, from verbal abuse to termination.
“The economic success of the garment industry must come hand-in-hand with the realisation of workers’ rights,” Callamard said in her statement. “Freedom of association is key to tackling the abuse of workers’ rights. It must be protected, advanced and championed.”
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A ‘Climate of Fear’ in Fashion’s Supply Chains
The killing of a union leader in Bangladesh this summer has heightened anxiety over the risks facing labour organisers amid a broader, often violent, crackdown on labour rights.