Case Studies: Insights into the Garment Industry’s Informal Workers

Behind every garment hanging on a store rack is an invisible workforce – women stitching in cramped homes, workers in unregistered small factories, all operating in the shadows of global fashion supply chains. The informal garment sector is one of the largest components of the urban informal economy in countries like India and Bangladesh, yet the people who power it remain among the most economically precarious workers in the world. Case studies from this sector offer a striking window into a system that generates enormous profit while systematically underpaying and underprotecting those doing the actual work.

Who are informal garment workers? 🔗

The garment industry’s informal workforce is not a monolith. It spans home-based workers, small factory laborers, and subcontracted employees who operate outside the coverage of formal labor laws. Homeworkers receive raw materials and production instructions – often through an intermediary or broker – and complete stitching, beading, or embroidery tasks at home. Others are employed in small, often unregistered factories that technically exist in a legal gray zone.

What connects both groups is structural invisibility. Homeworkers in the garment supply chain are frequently excluded from national labor laws, often classified as self-employed rather than employees. This classification strips them of rights to minimum wage, paid leave, collective bargaining, and workplace safety protections. The global garment industry employs an estimated 60 million workers, and the deprivation faced by the majority of these workers stands in sharp contrast to the profits reported annually by global fashion brands.

The home-based worker: a case study from India 🔗

In cities like Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai, thousands of women work from home as part of informal garment supply chains. Subcontractors distribute cut fabric to these workers, who stitch, embroider, or finish garments and return them for a per-piece payment. The earnings are deeply inadequate – a woman working at home might earn as little as ₹50 to ₹100 per garment, working long hours to meet production deadlines, with no guarantee of consistent work from week to week.

Research by the Blum Center for Developing Economies at UC Berkeley documented the conditions in India’s home-based garment sector across multiple cities and found it to be among the most exploitative forms of informal employment. The report found women and girls forming the majority of this workforce, often under conditions of forced labor by international definitions, with children in some districts also engaged in garment finishing tasks.

The piece-rate trap 🔗

The piece-rate payment system is central to how home-based workers are exploited. Because workers are paid per completed garment rather than by the hour, complex or time-consuming items can result in wages far below the legal minimum. There is no fixed schedule, which means workers often stitch late into the night to complete orders. The location of work and the volume of orders are entirely flexible – to suit those at the top of the supply chain, not the workers at the bottom.

Home-based workers also have no access to social protection. There is no pension, no healthcare coverage, no workers’ compensation if they are injured. Working in isolation, they have little ability to organize or collectively push back against wage suppression. The informal nature of home-based employment means there is generally no oversight guaranteeing decent working conditions, no contracts protecting workers from exploitation by intermediaries, and no long-term job security.

Small factory workers: visible but still vulnerable 🔗

Workers in small, informal garment factories face a different but overlapping set of problems. These factories may be unregistered or semi-formal, recruiting workers through labor brokers who sometimes charge placement fees. Employment is typically casual – workers can be terminated without notice or severance. Factories often operate in overcrowded, poorly ventilated spaces with unsafe equipment. Supervisors frequently use threats of wage deductions or dismissal to enforce production quotas.

Garment workers are often forced to work 14 to 16 hours a day, seven days a week. During peak season, they may work until 2 or 3 a.m. to meet brand deadlines. Basic wages are so low that workers cannot afford to refuse overtime – even when that overtime is unpaid. The minimum wage in India is nearly three times less than a living wage as calculated by the Asia Floor Wage, and in Bangladesh it is nearly five times less.

In knitwear hubs like Tirupur in Tamil Nadu, for instance, many factory workers are employed under casual contracts with no fixed tenure. Workers have no unions to turn to – in many of these facilities, unionization is actively suppressed. Those who attempt to organize or raise grievances risk being fired or physically threatened.

The gender dimension: women bearing the heaviest burden 🔗

Women and girls form the cornerstone of the garment workforce and yet they bear the brunt of its unequal pay and poor working conditions. In Bangladesh, approximately 80 percent of garment workers are women. In India, women dominate home-based garment work across the informal sector. Yet rather than reflecting their numerical strength, this feminization of the workforce reflects a deliberate economic logic: women’s labor – particularly women’s home-based labor – can be paid less, controlled more easily, and justified by existing gender norms that tie women to domestic and care responsibilities.

Women face a persistent wage gap, earning less than men for comparable work, and endure rampant gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace. In many South Asian countries, garment work is framed as an opportunity for women to enter paid employment. While this is true at one level, the opportunity is consistently undermined by the structural barriers that keep women locked in the lowest-paid, least protected tier of the supply chain.

Economic independence versus structural exploitation 🔗

Research on female garment workers in Bangladesh presents a complicated picture. A study examining the impact of paid garment employment on women’s empowerment found that women with access to this sector gained greater autonomy, improved self-esteem, and more confidence in household decision-making. The World Bank has noted that garment employment in Bangladesh has helped reduce early marriage rates and given women greater voice in the social sphere.

However, researchers caution against reading this as genuine empowerment. The language of women’s empowerment in this context often hides the reality that women’s socioeconomic position has not substantively improved – Bangladesh’s garment workers remain among the lowest paid globally. The income a woman earns provides a degree of independence, but it does not overcome the double burden she carries: paid work at exploitative rates, combined with unpaid domestic and care work at home. Home-based workers often carry the double burden of paid work alongside childcare and household duties, and social or cultural restrictions on women’s movement outside the home further limit their options.

Wages, living standards, and the poverty cycle 🔗

The garment industry employs approximately 60 million factory workers worldwide, yet fewer than 2% earn a living wage. In Bangladesh, a research study found that 100% of garment workers interviewed earned below a living wage, with 90% unable to afford sufficient food, and 72% unable to access medical treatment when ill or injured. These numbers make the human cost of cheap fashion concrete and measurable.

No major brand can demonstrate that all workers in its supply chain are paid a living wage – this holds true for fast fashion giants, luxury labels, and sportswear companies alike. Brands place large orders, demand the lowest possible prices, and switch suppliers whenever a cheaper option emerges elsewhere. Factory owners, squeezed by these pricing structures, keep wages low and pass the pressure down the chain – straight onto the most vulnerable workers at the bottom.

Resistance and collective action 🔗

Despite these conditions, informal garment workers – particularly women – have not been passive. In India, the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) was founded in 1972 in Ahmedabad as a trade union specifically for poor, self-employed women in the informal economy. SEWA has worked to organize garment workers, push for higher piece rates, and negotiate fairer working conditions. In 1986, SEWA negotiated a minimum wage for garment stitching and has since helped workers access identity cards, childcare, and health benefits.

Today, SEWA has over 3.2 million women members across 18 states in India. Its members collectively campaign for minimum income protections, advocate for fair piece rates in local markets, and run community-based social security schemes including childcare cooperatives and healthcare collectives. This model of organizing – embedded in the lived realities of informal workers – offers a meaningful counterpoint to the structural exploitation that the industry depends on.

In Bangladesh, worker protests over wages led to significant confrontations. Widespread protests in late 2023 resulted in the government raising the minimum wage by 56%, to $113 per month – though unions argued a true living wage would require at least $210 per month. The gap between what governments mandate and what workers actually need to live with dignity remains a defining feature of the industry.

What structural change would actually look like 🔗

Case studies of informal garment workers make one thing clear: the problems they face are not individual or incidental. They are built into the structure of global fast fashion. The supply chain model is designed for maximum efficiency and cost reduction, which consistently translates into poverty wages, precarious employment, and suppressed workers’ rights at the production end. Workers are left deprived not only of wages but of sleep, healthcare, safe transport, adequate food, and time itself – from needing to work extra hours just to survive.

Meaningful change requires action at multiple levels: brands must commit to transparent, enforceable living wage standards in their supply chains; governments must enforce – not just legislate – labor protections that cover informal and home-based workers; and international frameworks must extend legal recognition to homeworkers who currently fall outside the definition of “employee” in many national laws. Consumers, too, play a role: only 1% of brands currently disclose how many of their garment workers earn a living wage, and pushing for that transparency is a first step toward accountability.

What do you think? The women who stitch our clothes are often described as benefiting from the employment the garment industry provides – but does access to paid work actually translate into economic independence when wages remain below survival level? And if global fashion brands can afford to report billions in annual profits, what is the structural barrier preventing them from guaranteeing a living wage to every worker in their supply chain?

References

1. https://www.wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/garment-workers/
2. https://cleanclothes.org/poverty-wages
3. https://blumcenter.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Tainted-Garments-1.pdf
4. https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/pr-profit-and-empowering-women-in-garment-industry/
5. https://www.sustainyourstyle.org/en/working-conditions
6. https://sites.udel.edu/lizs/working-conditions/
7. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2025/11/workers-rights-in-the-garment-industry-a-gender-discrimination-issue/
8. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2772655X2200026X
9. https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2017/02/07/in-bangladesh-empowering-and-employing-women-in-the-garments-sector
10. https://digitalcommons.cortland.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1049&context=wagadu
11. https://www.earthday.org/beneath-the-seams-the-human-toll-of-fast-fashion/
12. https://www.smu.edu/-/media/Site/Law/students/law-journals/Fall-2022-Case-Notes/Smalling_2022-Case-Note-Final.pdf
13. https://www.sewa.org/about-us/history/
14. https://www.dandc.eu/en/article/union-informal-workers-how-does-work-more-50-years-women-india-have-been-supporting-each