Going to Brussells

This is the first update on the progress of our petition calling for mandatory clothing labels which indicate the working conditions of the people who made them.

If you’d like to sign the petition, it’s here: ***No it’s not any more! PETITION NOW CLOSED

Exciting news! Our voices have been heard!

I have been invited to go to Brussels to attend The Hands That Sew Your Shirt and propose working condition clothing labels to the European Commission.

This would not have happened without your early support of this petition. THANK YOU.

The next step is to start a European Citizen’s Initiative (ECI) which I will start work on when I get back from Brussels. This is a massive task and involves setting up a committee with representatives from 7 EU states, then getting 1 million signatures on the petition. Yes, 1 million!! And we can do it.

Green MEP Keith Taylor has offered his support with this campaign following his successful involvement with the ECI calling for an eight hour limit on live animal transport. I will also be building a network of non-government organizations such as the Clean Clothes Campaign, Labout Behind the Label and Care International, to help drive the campaign forward through their own channels.

In the meantime, we need to keep spreading the word. It’s truly outrageous that the fashion industry won’t come clean about their use of sweatshop slavery. 8 million people in Bangladesh alone work in garment manufacture. And while the European Commission’s own 2013 study revealed that 84% of EU consumers care about how their clothes are made, fashion retailers are under no legal obligation to provide this information.

We know about the conditions of the chickens that lay our eggs, it’s time we knew about the working conditions of the people who make our clothes.

Thank you again for your involvement. Please continue to share the petition on all your social networks and via email. Invite people to sign. We’ve had success already with 300 signatures, imagine if we each got just one more person to sign and had double the signatories by next week.

This is just the beginning of a long campaign and there’s a big job ahead. But together we are being the change we want to see in the world… and it’s very exciting.

Kate

This was originally published on diamondsanddaisychains.com