di Giulia Dominici, 4B
Imagine opening your computer and from a single website, being able to buy all the clothes you could desire for a few dollars. Thanks to the Chinese brand Shein this is possible: here you can find a swimsuit for ten dollars or a wedding dress for forty dollars.
During the pandemic Shein became the most popular fast-fashion brand and since then thousands and thousands of people buy everyday clothes from this website but nobody cares about the origin of their shopping. Everyone is so happy and satisfied thanks to their full shopping carts for fifty dollars but how is it possible that a shirt or a pair of pants only cost five dollars?
If we don’t pay it is because someone else is paying for us: in this case who pays are the workers who work for the Shein suppliers. A recent report by Swiss advocacy group “Public Eye” shows that the Shein’s staff work 75 hours a week with one day of rest a month and a base salary of 4,000 yuan per month — roughly $556 — to make 500 pieces of clothing per day. The working conditions of the employees are terrible, for example the workers are penalized two-thirds of their daily wage if they made a mistake on a clothing item and also the health conditions are really worrying, in fact the employees work all day breathing toxic and dangerous substances from the dyes or synthetic fabrics.
Cases like this one are the sad reality of most products we buy, in fact many items from China, Bangladesh, India and other East countries are produced by what we called “modern day slaves” that are people who are exploited by others, for personal or commercial gain in this particular case we talk about really poor people who don’t have money even for water or food and are forced to work in industries that exploit them to work lots and lots of hours without a fair pay and without any right and certainty of pay and work.
Realities like these are very common and our responsibility is to know and learn the better choices to help the most unfortunate people in other countries.
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