Starting on Tuesday 19^th May 2009, Blood Sweat and Takeaways will examine the working conditions in the food industry in South East Asia. Six British fast food fanatics will live and work alongside workers catching, harvesting and processing food products such as tuna and prawns in Indonesia and rice and chicken in Thailand. The TV programme will examine the human cost of the food industry.

The first programme looks at Indonesia’s tuna industry in Bitung on the island of Sulawesi. In the UK, we consume over a billion tins of tuna each year and Bitung’s canneries supply many British supermarkets and food service companies.  The participants live with tuna workers in basic communities, endure 90-degree heat in the canneries and struggle with the harsh realities of life on a traditional wooden tuna boat in the western Pacific.

Watch a clip of the fast food fanatics visiting a Tuna factory here

We are excited to see that the BBC is exploring working conditions in the food industry as a follow-up to last year’s series. The title suggests that the focus of the programmes will not be solely on supermarkets, but that it will also target the food service industry.  This is an unusual approach as the British supermarkets are usually the target of these types of expose. The issues of course are widespread in the food industry and are not only located in the supply chains of supermarkets. On reflection, last year’s series covered the issues sensitively and intelligently and we hope this year’s season does the same.

 ”Most of our graduates will either set up their own businesses or work in a fashion or retail company, so it is important to equip them with knowledge of the ethical issues that they will have to grapple with. If they set up their own businesses and outsource production, they will have to think of the conditions people making the goods will be working in. Some will be buyers for retail chains, but buyers often don’t think of the conditions of workers when negotiating a price for garments. In the current economic crisis, people are going to be looking for bargains, but the vast majority of workers producing this clothing are not on a living wage…. If the students leave Northumbria University with an understanding of how the prices they negotiate will impact on suppliers and workers’ wages … they are more likely to become an ethical buyer or business owner.”

As part of the experience, students heard from fashion industry professionals about their experiences working in factories, learnt about the technical processes of production and spoke to Bangladeshi women who have worked in the Bangladeshi garment industry.

Impactt applaud this innovative teaching experiment and hope that the students’ experiences will remain with them as they enter the fashion industry as the designers, buyers and sourcing directors of the future.

Like ‘Blood Sweat and T-Shirts’ the shows concerns the working conditions of Indian workers making clothes for Britain’s low cost fashion industry. These include poor health and safety, low wages, excessive overtime, discrimination, physical abuse and even child labour.

The format is expected to be similar to the BBC3 show. The programme makers use undercover footage from factories which are allegedly producing for Primark, combined with interviews with workers and former workers. In a new twist on the ‘reality sweatshop’ theme, the programme will show host Alexa Chung’s sweatshop which was set up in London’s West End staffed by 15 volunteer members of the public.

With the increasing downward pressure on prices of clothing, Primark is an easy target for criticism. In December 2006 the War on Want report ‘Fashion Victims‘ found workers making clothes for Primark working eighty-hour weeks for 5p an hour, forced overtime and potentially deadly working conditions in Bangladesh. A 2007 update with Labour behind the Label found very little improvement. Primark is the leading low-cost fashion retailer and as such has become synonymous with the argument that low cost at the point of purchase means poor wages in the factory. There is some evidence that Primark are moving to improve this image, joining the Ethical Trading Initiative in 2006 and developing a new strategy for ethical trade.

On balance we thought that the Blood Sweat and T-shirts programme, whilst including a large dose of ‘reality TV’ drama, raised some relevant issues, and dealt with them sensitively. We eagerly await the results of Channel 4′s effort.

This week the young fashionistas found themselves in the slums of Dharavi in Mumbai, where amongst the warren of backstreets and open sewers they saw factories making and embroidering clothes for the UK and US market. In these small backrooms, workers worked from 8am – 10pm in dangerous and unhygienic conditions. The workers were earning about £3.20 a day.

The group were horrified at the low levels of health and safety in the factories.  Stacey, a 20 year old shop assistant from Luton, expressed her horror at the conditions, saying: “a safe working environment, where you’re not going to die of disease is not a lot to ask for.”

As they came to terms with the working environment, and saw how critical these jobs were to workers (who were earning twice the average wage of cotton pickers), they started to change their minds about the factories, realising that there was little point in naming and shaming companies sourcing from these factories, since this would mean the workers might lose their jobs.  As Richard, a 24 year old advertising executive comments: 

“We are not really doing anything wrong as a UK consumer.  If anything we are being a massive help to these guys, because if it wasn’t for us buying their clothes then as people keep pointing out, these guys wouldn’t have a job and if we think that the conditions here are bad now, you wait ‘til all the UK consumers revolt and turn around and say ‘actually we’re not going to buy any clothes from India anymore because we’re not happy with the conditions’ you wait to see what the conditions are like in a year.”

The group discovered that one of the biggest problems in Dharavi, is the use of child labour in the garment industry.  The girls interviewed one of their fellow workers in the factory who had been working in the factory since he was 10.  They joined Satish, an enforcement officer with an NGO working to eliminate child labour in the garment industry.  In one factory they found one young boy hiding behind a loom, he looked no older than 13.  Satish and the girls questioned the boy about his age, and why he was in the factory, as he looked on terrified.  It powerfully demonstrated the importance of dealing with the issue of child labour in a very sensitive manner.  Impactt has developed a series of child labour guidelines which are currently being reviewed in consultation with stakeholders.

The series finished with a visit to a school set up for rescued child labourers, where the children’s young age and vulnerability was starkly evident. 

At the end of this controversial and challenging series, we were extremely pleased to see that some serious issues were raised and difficult questions posed.  The group left India with a better idea of why workers were willing to put up with such poor working conditions and why children are so commonly forced to work.

We thought we should leave the last word to Tara, a budding fashion designer.

“The dilemma that I’ve got is that I really can’t condone the conditions of some of the factories that we’ve visited but I can’t really condemn them because they are providing people with jobs and with roofs over their heads.”

The plight of Indian garment workers is at least being communicated, and maybe this is an effective way to capture the attention of younger generations who are accustomed to the benefits and not the repercussions of fast fashion.

The quest for ‘ethical trade’ raises some difficult issues to swallow and any creativity in communicating  the challenges of upholding labour standards should therefore be central to how the issues are presented. Radiohead’s new All I Need music video about human trafficking is a great example. It was made in partnership with MTV’s campaign against human trafficking and communicates a difficult subject in a comfortable arena. In Impactt’s opinion, media projects play an important role to changing consumer attitudes and while current projects such as Blood, Sweat, and T-shirts may not be perfect, it is progress. 

If you missed last night’s episode, you can watch it here: BBC3

Or visit the show’s official site to learn more about it.

Viewers of last Saturday’s episode of Doctor Who will have seen the pair arguing about the ethics of enslaving the Ood to further the human empire.  The Doctor’s view was that humans had always relied on slavery. When Donna exclaimed “I don’t have any slaves!” The Doctor replied, quick as a flash, “Who do you think made your clothes?” 

The Impactt team is eagerly awaiting the first mention of supply chain labour standards on The Archers.  A modest prize will be awarded for reports of future references in unexpected places!