Who Gets Protected, and Who Doesn’t? Cotton and Labour (Part 1)
A journey through history to understand today’s gaps in worker rights, by Simon Ferrigno.
Before we talk about labour rights in cotton today, we need to understand how we got here. Who gets what, and why? Who is seen, protected, or left out?
This piece explores the historical forces that shaped how cotton workers are treated. From colonialism and industrialisation to changing social values, these forces help explain why protections remain uneven across the supply chain.
Why do we have labour rights?
A fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work1. It sounds simple. But fairness depends on who defines it. Who decides what a day's work is, or what it’s worth? And who has the power to shape those decisions locally, nationally, and internationally?
It’s clear to most of us not all jobs are valued equally. And most farm and bottom-of-the-supply-chain jobs are out of sight to consumers. To give you an idea of how many people work behind the scenes in farming, "Around one-quarter of the world’s labor force work in agriculture." So they are often off the books, and poorly paid, especially for weaker groups, such as women, migrants, and children.
Even when they are formal, some manual jobs (even if requiring technical and specialist knowledge) are undervalued in a society that rewards jobs in business, tech, and finance information above all else.
Laws exist because there is a power differential between workers and employers, and because of different social values placed on certain jobs. Work is not a simple matter of being willing to work, and someone paying you for it.
Labour laws seek to address this. They might regulate working hours, rights to be a union member, minimum wages, holidays, rights to time off and breaks, maternity and paternity pay, and rights to not be discriminated against for gender, sexuality, religion, or race, and protection in case of bullying or sexual harassment, and so on. But, differential labour rules and pay are one of the biggest bargaining chips in business and trade. Businesses seeking to cut costs seek countries with lower rights. Countries seeking investment might trumpet their cheapness and ease of “hiring and firing”, while they claim to meet International Labour Organisation (ILO) core standards, the widely ratified set of conventions outlining global labour protections. But this does not stop the abuse or underpayment of labour, banning of unions, or actual forced labour.
Some history…
Inequality is an ancient fact, but our current labour model is rooted in the disruptions and developments of the last 500 years: the destruction of traditional systems of labour, community, and social organisation by successive waves of slavery, colonialism, imperialism, and industrialisation. Uprooted people were vulnerable and easily exploited, without even the meagre paternalistic protections of feudal or traditional systems. Even when slavery was abolished, what we now call modern slavery was rife, debt bondage in particular2.
Certainly there was waged labour, migrant labour, and seasonal work before European expansion, but the abuses from colonial and industrial expansion led to the push for workers’ rights. It was the widespread exploitation under colonial and industrial systems that made the need for protection impossible to ignore. In response, workers began to organize, and unions emerged as a way to challenge abuse and reclaim power.
These efforts to improve workers’ rights began to gain momentum in the 19th century and accelerated after the First and Second World Wars, driven in part by independence movements and newly independent countries in the global south.
The International Framework for Labour Rights
The International Labour Organization (ILO), founded in 1919, now sits under the United Nations and exists to promote standards for work and labour, and to address inequalities3. The United Nations 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights is also part of the labour rights framework, as it establishes principles of protection and dignity, as well as equal rights4.
What is labour?
What is labour? It is the people who work, the work they do, the product of that labour, and share of the value they get back. It’s one of the factors making up an economy with land, capital, and business (in some types of business such as a coop, it is also the business)5.
What was labour like before industrialisation?
Were things better before industrialisation across the world? Do we need to go back to move forward?
Probably not. In feudal Europe, depopulation due to the black death did allow workers to gain a certain amount of freedom and better wages6, but elites quickly fought back. An 1886 study described English labour laws between the 16th and 19th century as “... a ‘conspiracy’ aiming ‘to cheat the English workman of his wages, ... and to degrade him into irremediable poverty”7. Being unemployed was effectively criminalized: “...to undermine the power of workers to negotiate contracts and force men, women and children into compulsory service”8. These laws laid the foundation for a labour system designed to control rather than protect.
Around the world, concepts of shared land, work, and labour existed, including in Europe, until the “enclosure of the commons” in several countries, which deprived people of common land and conveniently forced rural people into the urban workforce9 10. Common works could include maintaining infrastructure, such as water and irrigation systems, some still existing today in various countries.
Yet there were also forms of debt bondage, family labour, and coerced service. Some studies highlight how surplus value was extracted through "class-like" social institutions and various forms of slavery (although not comparable in scale to the European trans-Atlantic slave trade)11.
In the 1920s in Nigeria, ‘Ishan’ cotton was grown by female farmers, who also produced cloth and were “culturally protected from male competition”12. Men formed work gangs to help them with weeding, in the way women often do on cotton farms today (colonial cotton administration did not recognise women as cotton farmers or land owners)13.
What was different was the lack of systematic coercion, although family labour might be prized because “it could easily be managed and disciplined”.
Also in Nigeria, the Berom people in the Jos plateau integrated women into production, although they remained discriminated against in land ownership and labour: “The basis of men’s wealth was largely the control they had over women’s labor and communal labor ...”14.
Cotton work in India in the 1940s
So there was no rosy past.
In more recent history, we find a baseline to compare today to. Some 80 years ago, as the UN was just getting started, a study in India was set up to review labour in the cotton sector. The 1943 study by economist B.P. Adarkar, the “Report on Labour Conditions in the Cotton Ginning and Baling Industry”15 examined work, conditions of employment, accidents, wages, social security, and holidays in India’s cotton gins
Completed in August 1945, just two years before India’s independence, his findings show that labour rights were barely present, despite the existence of various “factory act” regulations. Women, seasonal, and migratory workers were treated worse than others (“in regard to matters like over-time pay, dearness allowance, bonus, etc., contract labour was found to be at a disadvantage”). Accidents were common, and any benefits dependent on a patriarchal system. Health & Safety rules were not applied, with no provision of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE). Asthma and bronchitis were rife. Housing and sanitation were appalling. Limits on working hours existed, but breaches of time off rules were common. In many workplaces, medical care consisted of little more than a first-aid box, with no trained first aider. Little provision was made for women workers, or children’s education. And most seasonal workers were migrants from agriculture.
This was the late British colonial administration, often described as enlightened. But this shows that even under a supposedly enlightened regime, workers (especially women and migrants) had virtually no protections. And across much of today’s textile supply chain such gaps between rights and practice continue.
The ILO conventions remain as needed as ever, as does their implementation.
Looking back to look forward
Since the 1940s, cotton and fashion production have grown at an exponential scale. But many of the same labour issues remain. Looking back helps us understand why.
Colonial legacies, economic systems, and social hierarchies laid the groundwork for patterns of exploitation that persist today, especially for those furthest from power: migrants, women, informal workers, and children. Labour protections were hard-won, but unevenly applied, and too often bypassed in the name of efficiency or growth.
The world has changed, but the roots of inequality run deep.
In Part 2, we’ll explore what progress has been made and why so many workers in cotton still fall through the cracks.
Simon Ferrigno is a writer and researcher focusing on cotton and sustainability, currently based in Derbyshire, UK.
This Stanford philosophy entry covers colonialism and touches on many relevant areas including slavery and imperialism. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/colonialism/
For a general definition, see https://www.britannica.com/money/labor-in-economics
The Pre-Colonial Mode of Production and Labour Organisation Amonth the Berom of the Jos Plateau in Northern Nigeria. Alahira H. A. Department of History, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria https://paper.researchbib.com/view/paper/34564