The first funding goal means a support of the garment workers in form of approximately 300 shirt orders.
Imagine you and your colleagues demand a more just salary and the next thing you know is that you are fired. What’s more, police comes and picks you up and you end up being charged based on nothing but specious allegations. To make the misery perfect, your now ex-boss publishes your name and picture on the web for all other factory managers to see. As a consequence you find yourself blacklisted meaning you cannot get a new job at all! Hard to imagine? Sadly, however, that’s exactly what is happing to thousands of workers in Bangladesh right now; those people who make a big share of our clothes under often catastrophic and inhumane conditions. NO VICTIMS FOR FASHION! is our way of contributing to not let this gross injustice going unanswered, to become active and to take a stand!
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If you’d like to join us, please show your solidarity and order one of the fairly and co-operatively sewed* t-shirts from the list of the campaign rewards (or give a free amount of your choice)! All campaign surpluses will be used for legal assistance to the affected workers.
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With NO VICTIMS FOR FASHION! we want to emphasize that even 6 years after Rana Plaza, the biggest and deadliest factory collapse in the history of the fashion industry, life for garment workers in Bangladesh is still everything but ok. Poverty wages, discrimination, violence and sexual harassment continue to happen on a daily basis.
With the recent and ongoing attacks on the growing number of organized workers and the persecution of especially those who dare to speak out and take action, the situation has reached a new level of escalation. Hence, international solidarity and pressure on multinational corporations who source from Bangladesh are strongly needed! Those responsible in politics and the industry, who frequently are the same persons in Bangladesh, need to feel this pressure and ought to be forced to step back.
A strong and organized labour movement is imperative for a sustainable improvement of working and living conditions in Bangladesh. The attacks therefore not only concern the workers themselves but everyone - from consumers to designers to entrepreneurs - who is working towards a Fashion Revolution and a truly sustainable garment industry! Let’s not be quiet about the attacks on the many thousand workers! Let’s send a strong message of solidarity together!
*Fairly produced means the campaign shirts are not just coming with a good message and quality but that they are sewed in a co-operatively managed, worker-owned factory in Croatia. So we are talking about genuine solidarity t-shirts where the good cause they are sold for is not in stark contradiction to the conditions under which they are produced as is sadly so often the case. Almost needless to say the shirts are made from organic cotton. More detailed info on the production chain can be found here.
Objectives
Target group
With NO VICTIMS FOR FASHION! you can show your solidarity in an uncomplicated manner, despite the stressful life you may have, and what’s best: you can do it in a twofold way! On the one hand, with humans in Bangladesh, who are being persecuted because they chose to exercise their legitimate right to demand higher wages; on the other hand, with humans who in the middle of the capitalist system chose to establish a co-operatively owned and managed sewing factory in Croatia where our campaign shirts are made with dignity.
What exactly is the cost structure of each t-shirt?
Price per t-shirt: 29,95 €
Numbers include 19 % VAT as by the law in Germany.
What exactly happens with the surplus per t-shirt?
The surplus of each t-shirt after taxes is 5€ net and goes directly to the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh, which organizes legal assistance for the workers affected by the ongoing attacks. If the campaign is particularly successful, it has been agreed with the NGWF that some funds might be also used in support of other local unions respectively their persecuted members.
What exactly happens with the free amounts contributed to the campaign?
100 % of the free amounts (minus possible taxes and fees) also go to the National Garment Workers Federation in Bangladesh.
Transparency
After the campaign we will publish all records of the donation so that everything is transparent and traceable.
*Production and marketing costs include i.a. costs for materials, transportation, sewing, designing, prints, taxes, insurances, administration, promotion, sales, delivery of 1-2 t-shirts within Germany.
**Platform fees include a voluntary fee for using the startnext platform and the obligatory transaction costs for the external providers of financial services.
NO VICTIMS FOR FASHION! is an initiative by dna merch, the Berlin based provider of fair and co-operatively sewed t-shirts, who uses parts of its incomings in support of grassroots workers’ struggles in the global garment industry. The idea for the campaign came up in the end of March when the National Garment Workers Federation got in touch and asked dna merch for support. Over the course of last year’s struggle for a higher minimum wage in Bangladesh more than 11,000 workers have been fired. Against more than 3,000 of them, 69 were temporarily imprisoned, are now cases under false and arbitrary allegations pending.
dna merch