this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
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Male Fashion Advice
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Aren't Levi's/Dockers products being made by Uighur forced labor?
I don't remember them on the list list, but wouldn't be surprised if they were on it. It was a long list. For what it's worth, many of those brands claim to have stopped. Actually, looking it up now... As of April 2021, they were supposedly still doing it, but I'm sure they've issued a statement by now... Hopefully...
And to be clear, many of the brands on the list were not caught using Uyghur labor in their product manufacturing, but somewhere down their supply chain. And supply chains are tricky, so it could be that nobody at Levi's actually knew that their factories were using a factory that used a factory that got its cotton from Uyghur laborers... Which is still unacceptable. It's their responsibility to not use slave labor. But it's a more complex issue than just saying their jeans were made by slaves.
I actually have a friend who used to work at Adidas, and they put out, like, a hundred page report every year explaining all the work they're doing to actively avoid slave labor. It's a lot. Uyghurs aren't the only kinds of slaves out there. Factory owners withhold workers' passports, or otherwise abuse them in whatever way they can. It's a mess. I'd recommend listening to this episode of Articles of Interest for more on labor abuses in clothing factories. It's pretty harrowing.
tl;dr: yes, and fuck them, but it's a little more complicated than that