“You know, doing things remotely can feel like you are also removed from the problem,” says Livia, who interviewed Labour Union activist Kalpona Akter, Business and Human Rights Researcher Thulsi Narayanasamy, and Human Rights Lawyer Jessica Simor QC, remotely from her living room. However, using local crews on the ground meant they were able to replicate the intimacy as if she were there with them.
The documentary brings to life the work behind The Circle NGO’s latest report, led by Jessica Simor QC, Fashion Focus: A proposal for new EU legislation on a living wage. For the first time the fashion industry, which allows its workforce to live in destitution for its own ends, faces a coordinated, structured challenge through international law.
“The fast fashion brands that have fobbed off civil society activists for years on living wage are being driven to change by a powerful alliance of women,’ says Livia Firth, ‘This documentary brings together women who are experts in poverty, degradation and injustice because as garment workers in their supply chains they live it every day with women at the top of their international legal careers. The resulting report and strategy is borne out of mutual respect and commitment. It holds the brands and retailers who have always maintained that a living wage isn’t possible, to account. A string of broken promises can now be challenged on the basis of a human obligation to protect human rights. I can now see a day when we will get justice for garment workers.”
Watch Fashionscapes: A Living Wage now.