Business & Human Rights Resource Centre | 2021 KnowTheChain Apparel & Footwear Benchmark

Workers in apparel supply chains are among the hardest hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, workers had to survive on poverty wages; in the first three months of the pandemic alone, workers lost at least US$3 billion in income. Poverty, discrimination, a lack of labor protections, and restrictions on movement form the breeding ground for exploitation and forced labor risks— and the Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically worsened these factors. Workers’ already meager livelihoods were taken away and many lack the support of social and labor protections, which do not extend to (undocumented) migrant workers.