Fire in garment factory: Italy’s Bangladesh

The fire in a garment factory in the idyllic Italian city of Prato in Tuscany that killed seven Chinese workers has shed light on the inhumane conditions under which fast fashion is produced even in Europe.

Sweatshops in Tuscany

Teresa Moda, the ill-fated factory in the old wool and textile city of Prato, belongs to a number of sweatshops that exploit their mainly illegal workers who are too dependent to protest against their terrible working conditions. Around 100 illegal Chinese garment workers did not only work 16-18 hours shifts in the factory but also lived there, penned up like human livestock.

Early on Sunday morning, the workers were sleeping when the fire broke out. The cause is still not clear; it could have been a defect gas stove or a burning cigarette. Five men and two women didn’t make it out alive und died in the flames. What will happen to the rest of the workers who worked for a pittance (300 euros per month, gross) is unclear. Clear is that they produced clothes that proudly proclaimed “Made in Italy”.

After blood diamonds, blood garments seem to be the latest sad trend. Hundreds of factories like Teresa Moda apparently exist in Prato alone, if not thousands as 4,000 Chinese garment factories are registered in the city. Only 14,000 Chinese workers are registered with the local registry office; according to estimates, the number of illegal Chinese workers amounts to 35,000. The police and local authorities have been turning a blind eye to the sitation for twenty years now; the first migration of Chinese workers already started in the 1990s. Prato has since overtaken Milan as the Italian city with the largest Chinatown, third in Europe only after London and Paris.

For the Chineses workers, the situation is worse than that of workers in Bangladesh who are free and live with their families. In Prato, workers are in a foreign country, don’t speak the language and are completely at the mercy of their employers. And years can go by before they can keep their meagre wages, let alone save a penny because they first have to work off the debt from their traffickers.

According to calculations by Italian business journalist Silvia Pieraccini, the Chinese operations in Prato produce one million pieces of garments every day – made out of cheap material imported from Asia - which are then sold to traders all over Europe, without receipts or any documentation of course. The annual turnover is estimated at two to six billion euros. How many of those garments land up in British stores is something the industry has to ponder, as well as how many garment factories like the ones in Prato exist in the UK. Time to divert attention from Bangladesh to the garment production at home.

Images: Made in Italy (Daniel Pink)/Prato Chinatown (Sailko)