The Effects of COVID-19 on the Textile and Apparel Value Chain

This paper reports on the impacts of COVID-19 on the textile and apparel value chain. It is part of the ‘Strategies for improving labour condition within the Australian cotton value chain’ project funded by the Cotton Research and Development Corporation (CRDC). Australian cotton is part of a long and complicated chain of networked actors who make up the global textile and apparel industry. The fibre is primarily sent to offshore facilities in the Global South for textile and garment production. From here, it is embedded in a value chain that is labour-intensive, exploitative and difficult to monitor.This research investigates how the Australian cotton industry can influence working conditions along the textile and apparel value chain and mitigate the risk of labour abuses occurring downstream (Boersma et al., 2022). This represents a novel approach to a well-known problem. This paper reports on some of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on garment workers worldwide to present the opportunity for ‘downstream due diligence’. The findings spotlight the need for stakeholders throughout the value chain to work collaboratively to protect worker well-being. As is argued, a wider network of actors both ‘in’ and ‘out’ of the fashion industry needs to be involved in collaborative, multi- stakeholder organising to appropriately respond to injustice in the value chain