A few weeks ago, in Florence, in front of a shop in Zara, textile workers from Prato organized a small demonstration in solidarity with their colleagues who work for the large clothing group in Turkey. Fast fashion, the clothes we buy for a few euros in big chains, has for many years carried behind it the stigma of being a place of labor exploitation, of poor safety conditions in factories, a system of wild subcontracting in countries where production has moved to save money.

The sector is growing steadily (estimates vary, in 2026 we should be around 170 billion), the number of things we buy increases, while the number of times we wear it decreases and a substantial part makes the journey from the warehouse of the website where we bought it and return to then end up in landfill.  The data collected by the European Parliament show how and how fast fashion is also an environmental issue: between 4% and 9% of clothes are destroyed without being used, the world’s industry pollutes more than air and naval combined, in 2022, textile purchases in the EU generated about 355 kg of CO emissions per person, such as 1,800 km in gasoline-powered cars.

Professor Sarosh Kuruvilla teaches industrial relations at Cornell University and studies the global garment industry with the idea that solutions must be found, “my first concern is working conditions”. To understand, he visits factories, talks with corporate executives of large groups and public officials, then works to convince fashion giants to change the way they work. If fast fashion is the spearhead, it’s the entire world of fashion using cheap labor and lack of environmental rules. We met professor Kuruvilla in Florence, where he was a guest of the Ciampi Institute of the Scuola Normale Superiore for a series of lectures.

The first question concerns his studies and how you conduct them

I became interested in supply chains thanks to a British comedian working in the US, John Oliver, who hosts the show Last Week Tonight. In October 2015, he made a report on companies such as H&M, Wal-Mart and Gap, denouncing the way they managed subcontracting chains and the way labor was treated. When I started, no company wanted to share data from their subcontracting chains. After years they know that I respect the confidentiality agreements for which I use the data, but not the names of the groups that give it to me. They knew to put pressure on suppliers by reducing the prices paid each year or increasing demands for processing time and quantity. To understand, I go to factories, talk to managers and workers. It is a concrete approach, based on time-consuming fieldwork.

Why is it that despite knowing the damage caused by their way of producing large global enterprises, they are almost never held responsible?

There are only two ways in which a company can be held liable for what it does elsewhere: that the penalty occurs where the damage or violation occurred, or that it occurs in the company’s country of origin. Most home countries have no laws regulating the activities of their enterprises abroad. If a multinational company owns a subsidiary in the host country, the host country may take legal action against the subsidiary, which may object that ultimate responsibility lies with the parent company. But how can a host country, India or Vietnam, open legal action against a company that is based, for example, in the United States? They can try to sue in the US, but there is no legal system that allows it, the courts will reject the request explaining that they are not the competent court. This is what happened with the Bhopal disaster of 1985, when a toxic cloud caused thousands of deaths, the back-and-forth between Indian and American courts for 25 years and (almost) no one responsible. It was my hope that European mandatory due diligence legislation would introduce civil liability, but that part has been eliminated.

We have then the case of subsidiaries or suppliers of which local governments are sometimes shareholders or, more prosaically, factory owners and political figures are linked. For this reason, they do not apply existing laws and, above all, because investments by large foreign groups are essential for their development.

Businesses are unwilling to change, bureaucracies don’t function as they should, states are often corrupt or have common interests with businesses…

Big brands want profits, local factory owners want to earn money, and workers don’t want to be exploited. These are different interests. We need to find solutions that benefit everyone, aligning our interests. For example, we need to demonstrate that having cooling systems that allow workers to work at a comfortable temperature in very hot countries is beneficial for workers, increases productivity, and doesn’t cost much. In Dhaka, Bangladesh, where thousands of factories employ mostly women, temperatures are rising due to global warming, as is the risk of flooding. Those factories often lack fresh water. If adaptation policies aren’t implemented, workers will work harder, productivity will decline, floods will jeopardize products and delivery schedules, and the country will export less. Without adaptation policies, everyone loses. The Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, which I am part of, has a case study of a factory in Cambodia that installed a new cooling system. GLI calculated that it’s an investment that pays for itself in two years in terms of increased productivity alone.

Let us return to the role of multinationals. How do their purchasing practices affect the quality of work? Is there a correlation between violations of codes of conduct and orders from multinationals?

Yes. There is a direct connection between the way orders are placed and some violations of labor law. I big brand reduce the price I pay for a product, the factory owner has to shoulder that cost and will try to save something. For example, even the profit margin of giants like Foxconn (the Taiwanese giant that produces about 40% of private consumer electronics) is just above 2%. These are very small margins. Any price reduction has a direct effect.

Then there is the question of one hundred-day payment terms. In the clothing industry, they place the order and tell the supplier to go buy the fabric. A month passes. Then we move on to production, which takes four to six weeks. During this period, the provider must apply for a loan from the bank to pay employees and current expenses. Orders are placed online and perhaps change many times after the European or American company has seen the samples. If the order changes, processing times are reduced, with consequences for workers.

Businesses should understand that purchasing practices involve some stress, so their compliance policies must take this into account. Finally, short-term orders prevent you from scheduling. A seaside restaurant knows that during the low season it must have one person in the dining room and then have five in the summer, the same does not apply to a factory that cannot count on a medium-term time plan. The result is that local factories do not know how many workers they will need, which translates into a few permanent workers forced into overtime and precariousness for many, which in turn translates into a higher number of accidents or lower wages.

You also talk to suppliers, factory owners, what do they tell you?

A factory owner told me: “You know, professor, I would be happy to talk to you, but I have to be sure that this does not damage my image and that of the brands that buy from me, my livelihood and that of my workers depends on it.” Some factory owners complain that they have to serve too many brands and that some of them misbehave, continue to cut prices, and are unwilling to pay for the design changes that happen after seeing the samples. Some brands tend to take a little more responsibility. For many brands, it sometimes produces at a loss in the hope of recovering the following year or offsetting with orders from others.

Let’s talk about some good practices and also about recent changes, those generated by Covid.

Changes have occurred since COVID and after China became too expensive. After COVID, there has been a trend toward bringing supply chains back to closer markets. More and more European brands have chosen Morocco and Turkey, rather than Asia, and more and more American brands have focused on Mexico. But Asia remains the site of large-scale production.

I see a tendency for some major brands to establish closer relationships with factories with which they are comfortable, guaranteeing orders for a number of years. This is new, as is the fact that some major brands are reducing the number of suppliers, strengthening their relationship with them. If you have an established relationship with a factory, there is no need to subject it to a hundred checks, because you know it. And the factory knows what you want, there is collaboration. This seems to me to be a good sign because, let us take the example of air conditioning, if I have to invest in a system to improve working conditions, I know that I can count on orders that will pay for it.