Network Clothing is one of the leading manufacturers of handmade crochet and knitwear garments. Since 1994, the company has supplied leading UK and international retailers. Network Clothing has a network of around 3,000 home workers within its supply chain, around 1,000 of whom are active at any given time. Most of the home workers are based in and around Shantou, Guangdong.

Brands and retailers are increasingly demanding greater visibility over homeworking within global supply chains.    Network Clothing identified the need to gain a better understanding of the role that homeworkers play within its supply chain to mitigate any associated risk to the business.   

Network Clothing commissioned Impactt to:

• Map its supply chain in Shantou and track how product is moved from factory to home worker.
• Understand who is working in their supply chains and under what conditions.
• Gauge the impact of homeworking on the workers’ lives, families and communities.
• Identify existing problems and areas that could be improved.
• Understand and develop any necessary control measures to protect home workers.

Impactt mapped Network Clothing’s supply chain and identified two communities of homeworkers who were significantly affected by Network Clothing’s operations.  In-depth community assessments were conducted to understand homeworkers’ situation and socio-economic circumstances. Particular focus was applied to:

• Establishing their level of take-home pay and what this can procure.
• Identifying the benefits which this work brings them and their families.
• Understanding what other options are open to these workers and why they choose this work.
• Understanding the concerns they have about the work.

The community assessments utilised a participatory worker-centred approach to provide a real insight into the situation of the homeworkers. The outputs from this research helped Network Clothing begin to make meaningful improvements in the working conditions and the socio-economic situation of homeworkers.

Whilst issues exist in this supply chain, it was clear that homework provides significant benefit to workers, in particular where workers have few other options to earn money.  In many cases, crocheting skills have been passed from generation to generation and provide valuable income to families and communities which may otherwise be solely reliant on agriculture or remittances.   Workers spoke positively about their work and the benefits it brings.

Following the Primark news stories and Panorama documentary a couple of weeks ago about the undeclared outsourcing and child labour in the Indian supply chains of Primark, we thought we would write a blog about homeworking and the challenges it represents, particularly in the Indian garment industry.

As we noted before homeworking is endemic in the Indian garment industry. It is a fallacy to believe that only Primark and low-cost garment retailers are vulnerable to the problems, such as child labour, associated with homeworking. The issues homeworking presents to retailers and brands are complex. All too often companies’ responses have been to ‘cut and run’, which has left workers in a more vulnerable position than they were in before. Retailers and brands should be responding to the issue in a progressive manner; improving working conditions for adults, whilst reducing the incidence of child labour in these relationships.

Homeworking in India exists for a number of reasons.  It is linked to old craft traditions, but increasingly it is being taken up due to declining opportunities for workers in the formal sector. It also relates directly to the growth in demand for hand-made and crafted items. It is characterised by women workers, young workers and low pay. As the Panorama documentary demonstrated middlemen organise the outsourcing to the homeworkers. The system is far from transparent and homeworkers often have irregular work and no contractual relationship with middlemen. Lack of rights, combined with limited transparency over working conditions means homeworkers are especially vulnerable and the incidence of child labour is high.

However, homeworking has a number of advantages to the workers themselves and to the factories with varied production schedules. In many cases homeworking is a key part of workers livelihoods and survival strategies. For many women, homework constitutes their employment of first choice as it can be combined with domestic work. In cultures where women’s mobility is restricted homeworking is the only employment option. There is some evidence to suggest that homeworkers’ working conditions can be better than some factory workers. Homeworkers can plan when they work and how they work. For the factories, homeworkers provide a pool of skilled workers, doing jobs such as embellishments that are difficult to mechanise. Homeworkers can be relied upon when a factory needs to increase production quickly.

So what can retailers or brands do to improve terms and working conditions for homeworkers? The ETI have produced the ETI homeworker guidelines: recommendations for working with homeworkers, which is an excellent first step. It has a number of recommendations which are particularly pertinent to homeworking on the Indian subcontinent. Another great resource is the HomeWorkers Worldwide website, which has a number of interesting research reports and resources for understanding the issue.

The first step should be to map supply chains to understand where outsourcing to homeworkers is occurring and identify where an intervention by a retailer/brand could have maximum impact. The ETI guidelines suggest that many efforts to improve conditions for homeworkers have been counter-productive because there was no initial effort to get a full understanding of the complex supply chains before embarking on a remediation programme.

Once the supply chains are understood, brands should work to ensure that the homeworking relationships become visible and the working conditions for homeworkers can be monitored and improved. Some brands and retailers have had success through the establishment of community centres where homeworkers can come together to work. The best of these are run and operated by an independent NGO or homeworkers’ organisation; are located close to workers homes, and are run as a central distribution centre. They have flexible opening hours; and are used as a focal point for introducing other schemes to benefit workers, such as training and social security schemes.

Other retailers and brands have helped the support of microcredit schemes and collective social insurance. Perhaps one of the most high profile of these schemes is Benetton’s partnership with Birima micro-credit programme in Senegal. It is not clear to what extent Benetton is sourcing from the recipients of this scheme, but it shows the potential of what a retailer or brand could do.

There remains much scope for companies and their suppliers to innovate in this area, to create new ways of working with homeworkers and create better conditions for these workers.