"I was a garment worker. I know how the system works." - Beth Macpherson on Empowering Fashion Workers through Ethical Clothing Australia

WARDROBE CRISIS with Clare Press

Clare Press interviews Beth Macphern, a former garment worker and current National Compliance Officer for the TCF Union, about the state of Austral

Key takeaways

• Beth Macpherson began her career as a 15-year-old binder operator in a Geelong shoe factory during the 1970s.
• The TCF Union manages compliance audits for Ethical Clothing Australia to ensure businesses meet legal pay and safety standards.

Main topics

• Australian textile manufacturing history
• Workers' rights and union advocacy

Notable quotes

Fashion is a verb.

Conclusion

The episode serves as a call to action for preserving manufacturing sk

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:00) For me, fashion is a verb. So, it's to fashion. Speaker 2 (0:04) You're listening to Wardrobe Crisis with Claire Press. Join me every week as we look at sustainability, ethics, and the business and madness of fashion. Speaker 1 (0:15) Hello again. I don't know Speaker 2 (0:17) where I went. Sorry for the wait. Joys of working for yourself. You can miss deadlines. Actually, I do know where I went. I got distracted writing my latest sub stack, which is in response to the PETA protests about wool at Fashion Week in London and in New York. I've written quite a long piece about this and why I do not think we should boycott wool. If you don't already follow my newsletter on Substack, please do check it out. It's also where listeners can support the podcast and help me keep making it. Anyway, our series on workers' rights continues. This week, the focus is Australia. We've just had Ethical Clothing Australia Week here, which highlights that organisation that accredits local clothing businesses that manufacture domestically. And they work with the TCF union to conduct audits and ensure that workers' rights are upheld. I've done a bunch of stuff with the ECA over the years, things like hosting panels and interviewing garment workers. And one of the things that always comes up is people say, surely worker exploitation doesn't happen here. It's an offshore thing, they think. Sadly, that is not the case. We don't get to say that, I'm afraid. I'll leave it to my guest this week to explain why. She is Beth McPherson. Speaker 1 (1:34) She's always actually been the one I wanted to interview from the union side here. I've Speaker 2 (1:39) been trying to persuade her for like two years. Why? Because, well... because of her deep experience, but also her own personal story. Beth started out as a teenager in the 70s working for a shoe factory in Geelong in Victoria. Now these days she is the National Compliance Officer for TUF2, which is the Timber Furnishing and Textile Union. It's taken a few different forms over the years, the Textile and Clothing Union. Until last year, it was part of the much bigger CFMEU manufacturing division. And back in the day, it was the Australian Textile Workers Union, which was formed in 1919. We discuss the evolution and changing shape of domestic manufacturing in Australia in the clothing, textiles and footwear sector. What's gone and what's left? Beth's own experience working in factories during the boom time before production moved offshore. Textile and sewing skills and how and why our governments should take them seriously into the future. The increasing use of outworkers today and how they can be invisible or fall through the cracks. And how many outworkers here are migrant women who come from non-English speaking backgrounds and often don't understand their rights as Australian workers. If you like this, please do help us share it far and wide. Remember, links and further reading can be found on thewardrobecrisis.com. Thank you, as ever, for listening and supporting the show. Speaker 1 (3:10) All right. Welcome to the Wardrobe Crisis Podcast, Beth McPherson. Thank you. Speaker 2 (3:15) Happy to be here. Beth, we've done a few events together now around Ethical Clothing Australia activations, also Fashion Revolution Week. And I actually asked you if you'd do this podcast a while ago because you've got... a really, I think, unique perspective on this industry with a long view. You've seen the changes, right? Yes. I want to start with what are some of the presumptions that people have about the garment industry in Australia today? Is it about, like I was thinking, maybe the first thing people say is, well, do we even have one? Speaker 1 (3:48) Yeah. Well, that's true. People aren't aware that the industry is still thriving in Australia. It looks different, of course. They use different business models these days and what they did in the 70s and 80s. It's more not the big factories, even though we have some, but it's more outsourcing to various small suppliers down the supply chain. So the industry is still a large industry nationally. It covers all areas right from, you know, design right through to dispatch and a whole range of types of garments and products. And there are some parts that are growing quite rapidly and that's in value adding and in the knitting machine arrangement, you know, knitting of jumpers and stuff like that, not knitted fabrics. Speaker 2 (4:35) Although yesterday at a Melbourne Fashion Week event, just by chance, I was listening to a panel about artisanal production of the future and Stephen from MKT... Speaker 1 (4:45) fantastic knitting factory just outside of Melbourne was talking about he's Speaker 2 (4:49) been here for like 30 40 years doing this incredible work high-end knitted wool and cotton yes so we do have it we have yeah absolutely absolutely there's also outside of fashion a fairly sizable kind of uniform and industry here making workwear making I don't know uniforms for care workers school Speaker 1 (5:07) uniforms maybe yes school uniforms are still big in Australia um and defense our Speaker 2 (5:13) defense And we do have actually some iconic footwear brands that still produce here, although we keep losing more and more of them, but RM Williams is still producing in South Australia. Yes, Redback Boots, still here. Is the Bloodstone business gone? Speaker 1 (5:26) Bloodstones only make gumboots in Tasmania. The rest is offshore. Okay. Speaker 2 (5:30) So kind of diverse portfolio, but obviously shrunk over the years. But that myth that do we even have an industry? Let's bust it. We do have an industry. Yes. All right. I was also thinking of one that I certainly hear, which is, and you and I have talked about this on stages, exploitation is something that happens somewhere else, wherever that might be, offshore, in places that don't have our values and structure Speaker 1 (5:52) and laws. It's not true. No, it's not. People say to me all the time, oh, no, I buy Australian made, so it's all good. Unfortunately, that's not the truth. There are very strong laws in Australia. around supply chain transparency and where the work is being done and the laws around that and how people are treated, regardless of whether they're working in factories or in their homes. And unfortunately, they aren't met. Obviously, the union's on the ground all the time policing those laws. So that's what keeps us busy. It is a myth to think that that sort of level of exploitation doesn't happen here. Speaker 2 (6:28) You are... the TCF, Textile Clothing and Footwear Union's National Compliance Officer. What Speaker 1 (6:34) is that? So my role is I manage the team of eight people that do the compliance audits for Ethical Clothing Australia. What we do is when a company applies for accreditation, we go out and we speak to the company and they provide us with records to show that they're paying the right rate of pay. that all the accruals are being accrued correctly for annual leave and personal carer's leave, that annual leave loading is paid, that superannuation is up to date and has been over the last 12 months. We actually scrutinise quite deeply to ensure that what... they're showing us is correct and then one of the really key parts of that is that we meet with the workers. We talk to the workers about some of the things that we've identified that may be issues, sometimes occupational health and safety risks within the workplace so we talk to the workers about that. We talk to them if we found an underpayment or something needs to be rectified and we follow up with the workers after that to ensure that that is being corrected. So Speaker 2 (7:41) At a Speaker 1 (7:41) very simple Speaker 2 (7:42) level, compliance is ensuring that businesses are actually doing what they say they are doing, but also that they are observing the good laws that we do have in this country. Speaker 1 (7:51) Yes. So all we're asking companies to do is to meet the laws of the land. We don't ask them to do anything else. Speaker 2 (7:58) When we consider compliance internationally, it's the same thing. There are different minimum wage laws in different countries. There are worker protections in different countries that vary. But when a big brand sends in an external auditor, they're looking at compliance. Speaker 1 (8:13) Unfortunately, we've done quite a bit of research on offshore certifications and accreditations. And what we find is that they don't scrutinise the way that we would. So they're not looking at individual workers' rights. They'll look at what the company, well, there's a couple of different versions. So one is that the company completes a tick box exercise and gets the tick off based on what they're provided. Some are a little bit more where they actually go in and they look at certain areas and they talk to workers that usually are appointed by a company. So the problem with that is that when we talk to workers, We find out a lot of information. So there's a lot of things that we can't see. When we go in, we can look around. It might look okay. Paperwork looks great. But it's not until we have those conversations with workers that we actually realise that there is other hazards in the workplace that aren't visible, such as bullying, harassment. There could be time pressures. There could be unsafe other workplaces, like temperature of the workplace. They've turned the heater on because I'm coming or they've turned the cooler on because I'm coming. So there's also those sort of things where we get feedback from the workers so we can get them rectified as well. Speaker 2 (9:29) Can we talk about unions as something essential but also what they actually do? I would imagine there would be listeners who hadn't really considered the role of unions or maybe even have a perception that unions are... Something from the past, something anti-competitive. I don't know. There's a long history of unions doing essential work to ensure that human rights move on through history. But why would you say unions are so important in Speaker 1 (10:00) the textile and clothing and footwear sector? Okay, so there's the history of what unions do speaks for itself. So the annual day. The eight-hour day. Yeah, the public holidays, superannuation. Even Speaker 2 (10:12) that though, Beth, when you say that, we just presume that nine to five is how we do things, but it Speaker 1 (10:17) wasn't always how we did things. No, it wasn't. There was a lot of workers that worked really hard and fought really hard and had strikes, et cetera, to be able to achieve an eight-hour day. And weekends. Yeah, and weekend penalties, you know, the five-day week. You know, all of those things weren't just given to workers. They were hard fought for. By unions? So Speaker 2 (10:38) let's start really with what is a union? What do they do? In Speaker 1 (10:41) its basic form, it advocates for workers and workers' rights. What that means is that they will lobby governments for better legislation to protect workers in the workplace, whether that's occupational health and safety, it could be the hourly rate of pay, all sorts of other conditions. Like we know that the superannuation has increased now to 12%. That didn't just happen. That was a long fight that the unions took up to be able to achieve that. Speaker 2 (11:10) But unions are member organisations with workers at their heart. So you join a union as a worker. Maybe you pay dues, do you have to pay to join? Yes, yes. Yes, everybody pays a fee. And then the leadership is taken from workers. Union leaders are workers too, right? Yes, yes, yes. And the point is you're sitting down at a Speaker 1 (11:28) table, presumably with the Speaker 2 (11:29) employers, and trying to figure out how you can come to an agreement. Speaker 1 (11:33) In some cases, if the workers are seeking an enterprise bargaining agreement, there is negotiations around bettering what would be in an award. But there's other things that the union advocates for workers every day. Unfortunately, in a lot of workplaces, workers are treated quite badly. They're working in unsafe environments. The workloads are unrealistic. There could be bullying or harassment in the workplace. So the workers are then able to contact the union and the organiser then goes and assists that worker to achieve a better outcome and deal with whatever that may be. Speaker 2 (12:11) Just historically, I'll share some links for this, but for example, in the United States when the New Deal came in, think about the Depression when nobody had any jobs and that huge numbers of people were unemployed. absolutely living on the poverty line then you had the war which caused further disruption after that there was a coming together basically of industry and workers to say we can't carry on like this we need to put in some structures that provide basic levels of care for members of society and actually the welfare state finds its origins in that history right if we didn't have worker unions it wouldn't have happened you have to have representation from the the majority, which is those doing the work, it can't just be left up to the capitalists to decide how Speaker 1 (12:52) they're Speaker 2 (12:52) going Speaker 1 (12:52) to structure society. It sounds pretty basic, but that's actually what it is. That's true. And, you know, also, it's not just about your workplace rights. I mean, the unions advocate for social change. Look at, you know, our healthcare system. Thousands of workers on the streets, hundreds of thousands of workers on the street lobbying to keep that. Not that long ago. I mean, our poor work is obviously protecting workers and advocating for workers in the workplace, making sure that they're achieving their workplace rights. But it goes broader than that. The union movement have always been involved in broader points of social change. Speaker 2 (13:24) Absolutely. Beth, I've been reading all these books about economics, Marxism, fascism, trying to get my head around actually particularly America and why I feel like it's descending into chaos. But I was trying to read... reread the stuff that I read 25 years ago at university to try and understand what are the structures that deliver progress in society or that can help wind it back when they