New Documentary Reveals Shein Factory Workers Gets Paid Four Cents a Garment
In recent years, fast fashion has increased in popularity due to its endless fashion cycles, trends, and cheap prices. Conversations surrounding unethical labor practices, overconsumption, and its environmental impact have been attributed to the success of fast fashion. Yet, large fast fashion brands like Shein have reached massive success, at the expense of their workers and our environment.
Courtesy of Eunoia Toks
Shein, a Chinese online fast fashion retailer, is estimated to be worth over $100 billion in April 2022. After their rebranding in 2015, Shein started marketing towards Gen Z and Millennials. Shein is also extremely popular on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. The trend #sheinhaul on TikTok shows influencers showing off what they purchased on Shein in collaboration with the brand. The hashtag has over 7 billion views and promotes overconsumption by showing how many articles of clothing you can get for $200-500. Similar videos on Instagram and YouTube have gained popularity, which has contributed to Shein’s success.
Courtesy of University of Queensland
Shein is one of the most unsustainable fashion companies in the world. According to Good On You, Shein is the worst of the worst and has the lowest score of, “We Avoid” for the planet. With countless allegations and proof of Shein’s unethical labor practices, design stealing, their limited information on their website regarding their supply chain, and their horrible environmental impacts like water pollution, micro-plastics in water supply, and carbon emissions, Shein proves that they are making zero effort to fix these issues.
Courtesy of Zandland
A recent Channel 4 documentary, Untold: Inside The Shein Machine, released on October 17, 2022, uncovers these exploitive practices with the use of hidden cameras. Hosted by journalist, Iman Amrani, the documentary sent an undercover worker to two of the factories that supply Shein’s clothing located in Guangzhou, China.
The documentary uncovered many labor violations. According to China’s labor laws, workers cannot work more than 40 hours a week. But, in both factories covered in the documentary, workers reportedly worked 18 hours a day and only got one day off a month. “There’s no such thing as Sundays here,” said a worker in the documentary.
Courtesy of WWD
With Shein adding over 2,000 items on their website a day, the work pace is extremely fast in the factories that supply Shein’s clothing. Shein workers are forced to keep up with the fast pace and must make 500 finished garments a day. In one of the factories, workers get 4,000 yuan a month, which is approximately $550.74 USD. But in the second factory, workers did not receive base pay and got paid 0.27 yuan per finished garment made, which is just under $0.04 USD. Also, workers got penalized two thirds of their daily pay for small mistakes.
Courtesy of Untold: Inside The Shein Machine
It is important to note that most of the people employed in the factories are women. In the documentary, female employees reportedly washed their hair in the sinks during their lunch breaks. The long and demanding hours left little to no time for their employees to keep up on personal hygiene.
Courtesy of The Krazy Coupon Lady
Although Shein’s human rights violations are their most inexcusable offenses, the documentary also touched on their business model. On the Shein app, the “infinite scroll” is paired with “dark patterns” that make consumers buy on impulse. Some of these techniques are free shipping deals, discounts, limited stock numbers, and countdown clocks to increase a sense of urgency. They also rely on micro-influencers to promote their products to their impressionable audience. Doing this saves them millions of dollars a year on advertising.
The brand has received backlash from many Twitter users. Kate Wagner, internet critic, expressed her concerns with the information uncovered by the documentary. “Whatever it is you can buy from there (Shein) is not worth this kind of human suffering,” Wagner tweeted.
Shein responded to the documentary by saying, “We are extremely concerned by the allegations presented by Channel 4, which would violate the Code of Conduct agreed to by every Shein supplier. Any non-compliance with this code is dealt with swiftly. Failure to meet Shein standards will result in termination of partnership. We have requested specific information from Channel 4 to assist further investigation. Shein’s Responsible Sourcing standards hold our suppliers to a code of conduct based on International Labour Organisation conventions and local laws and regulations, including labour practices, and working conditions”. The brand also announced its resale app the same day of the documentary’s release.
The documentary is only available on Channel 4 for UK listeners. https://www.channel4.com/programmes/inside-the-shein-machine-untold