Paper short abstract:

This article seeks to reflect on the working conditions of employees of Portuguese ethical fashion industry, their everyday life work in the studio and factories and the strategies they develop to resist to physical and psychological pressure and fight for more dignified conditions.

Paper long abstract:

The fall of Rana Plaza revealed the harsh conditions to which workers in the fashion industry are subjected (Horton, 2018). This industry, seeking to increase profits and reduce costs, produces mainly in countries in the global South, as these, due to economic, legal, and social factors, are more susceptible to labor exploitation (Nathan, Bhattacharjee, Rahul, et al., 2022).

However, it has been observed that in the global North these workers are also subject to precarious working conditions (Pereira, 2023). Among the youngest layers, a new type of worker is emerging, more flexible, always willing, which through the lens of compensation legitimizes and ignores the new forms of precariousness to which they are subject, and which inhibit them from satisfying their basic needs and having a decent standard of living (Peuter, 2014; Cecco, 2021).

This article is the result of my fieldwork in the atelier of 2 ethical fashion brands and interviews carried out with factory and unionized workers. It seeks to reflect on the working conditions of these women, their everyday life work in the studio and factories and the strategies they develop to resist to physical and psychological pressure and fight for more dignified conditions.

It is concluded that although ethical fashion brands are against labor exploitation, they are often oblivious to the real situation within the factories and have no power over what their production partners practice as fair wages or decent working conditions.