My Linh describes her time spent as an outworker in the Australian garment industry as feeling as though “I’ve been jailed”.
“That time was very hard, very hard to look after children, to look after my family and no time to do anything [but work]. Just stay home, stay home, no holiday, no nothing,” she says.
My Linh was paid 40c-50c per garment, around $4-$5 an hour. She never got holidays or sick pay for the years she worked at home. She was also never paid any superannuation – and now, in her early 60s, she is feeling the pinch of those years of lost super.
My Linh first found work in the industry in the 80s, in a Melbourne factory, printing fabric for T-shirts. She had arrived in Australia in 1982, as a 20-year-old refugee from South Vietnam, the only one of her family to make the journey. She worked at the factory for five years, but after she got married and had a baby to look after, a friend told her about a job that would mean she could sew clothes at home – “not the whole garment, just some of it” – if she had her own machine.
Speaking to Guardian Australia in English, her second language, My Linh says the idea of being an outworker excited her at first. It meant she could be present for her young family while also making some money. But the enthusiasm soon wore off.
“They pay very cheap,” she says. “They say to me, if I don’t finish, maybe they don’t pay. So I had to work very hard. Anytime I had time, I work. Even I can’t sleep – I sleep only few hours.”
No matter how fast she worked, there was always pressure to do more.
“I feel they cheating, because they want to force people to work quickly, faster, so they can get new order[s]. Too fast. I think maybe half of that is good enough for me. Because they said to me, ‘Hurry up, hurry up.’ All the time, they call, ‘You finished yet? You finished yet?’ And I get very stressed about that,” she says.
Homeworkers or outworkers in the clothing and textiles industry are far from rare in Australia, even today. The demographics of outworkers often follow migration patterns, with large European cohorts entering the industry in the 50s and 60s, followed by Vietnamese and Cambodian migrants in the 70s and 80s.
Many are refugees, struggling with a language barrier alongside the trauma of displacement. They gravitate to diaspora communities and find work through word of mouth. A combination of material need, lack of government support and employment discrimination contributes to an environment that leaves them open to exploitation and often ignorant of their rights.
Beth MacPherson, national compliance manager at the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union, says stolen superannuation is an issue in almost all cases of outworker exploitation, and it has compounding effects for those workers later in life.
“We find outworkers every day,” MacPherson says. “They’re working seven days a week, in a lot of cases long hours. They’re getting a really low equivalent rate of pay, and then there’s no super paid on that. So when they get to the end of their working life, not only have they not got super, they’ve got no savings, because all they’re doing is trying to get from week to week.”
Under the textile and clothing award, outworkers have the same minimum entitlements as any other employee, including fixed hours of work on an ordinary minute-based wage, weekend and public holiday loading, leave entitlements and superannuation. Modern slavery law also means the company at the top of the supply chain, often the label or the fashion house, can be held liable for any exploitation by subcontractors, even if they didn’t know it was happening.
In the early 2000s, the business community and the TCF union collaborated on a voluntary code of practice to help stamp out exploitation in the clothing industry. Companies would be assisted to audit their entire supply chain to ensure it complied with the law, and were then accredited for that transparency. Ethical Clothing Australia would manage the audit and accreditation, while the union would manage the boots-on-the-ground compliance work.
Rachel Reilly, the national manager of Ethical Clothing Australia, says many businesses want the industry to be better. “They’re trying to do the right thing, but someone profiting from exploitation can undercut that.”
She says ECA sees its role as working with businesses to find and resolve noncompliance issues, rather than punishing them. “Should a business choose not to resolve, then it stops being anything to do with us, but the union then has those powers to come in and prosecute, using their other legislative instruments to do so,” Reilly says.
The invisibility of outwork means even companies that believe their supply chains are compliant can be shocked once the audit is complete.
MacPherson describes a recent audit of a well-known brand that had directly contracted work to nine makers. “By the time we finished, we’d found 52 companies and individuals within that supply chain … [including] 11 outworkers. That company did not know there were any outworkers doing their work at all.”
The union employs outreach officers, often former outworkers themselves, who then go into their own communities to help locate, educate and advocate for others. The community connection is important to build trust, as outworkers are often fearful of speaking up, especially if they have been subject to intimidation or threats.
It’s been a long time now since My Linh quit the work and sold her machines, but she feels it’s important to speak out about what she went through. She worries for other workers, the effect the long hours have on them, and the impunity of companies that don’t pay them properly. “They just want to take money, money – they don’t care what they’re doing. It’s not fair for people like me.”
