A group of workers’ rights organizations have called on fashion brands and retailers to make a Supply-chain Relief Contribution (SRC), through which two per cent of their total sourcing budget from the preceding 12 months would be made available to garment workers struggling amidst the pandemic.

Led by the Asia Wage Floor Alliance (AWFA), Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) and member organizations HomeNet South Asia (HNSA) and HomeNet South East Asia (HNSEA), the workers’ rights groups’ call to arms has been made with the ambition of supporting not only contracted factory staff but also the hundreds of thousands of people worldwide which are time-rated, piece-rated, subcontracted and home workers, and so have fallen out of focus.

With millions of workers across major production hubs – including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Vietnam and India – fighting for survival amidst the uncertainty of the coronavirus crisis, the coalition of organizations hopes fashion’s leaders can throw down the gauntlet and support those in their supply chains. Through the SRC mechanism, companies of all sizes which source from the aforementioned nations would apportion some of their wealth – dependent on the scale at which they’ve bought over the past year – to keep supplier factories and their workforces afloat.