Zara employees and customers have been finding notes stuck into clothing from the company's factory in Turkey. The notes are being seen as cries for help, as well as a grassroots movement by the workers.
Zara is a well known Spanish brand who is in the news very often, usually for issues with producing knockoff designs. The brand is known for being one of the most prominent fast fashion companies in the business.
Fast fashion is defined by Merriam Webster as, "an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making fashion trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers."
The workers have been going into Zara's stores after the clothes have been distributed and putting the notes in pockets of garments they claim to have created. According to a report from the Associated Press, the tags read things like: “I made this item you are going to buy, but I didn’t get paid for it.”
The AP reports that the tags say the workers were employed by a factory in Turkey, which apparently closed down overnight, leaving them out of work without warning. The factory workers are claiming that Zara, as well as two other brands, Mango and Next, owe them three months of pay as well as severance allowance.
This lack of attention to workers' rights is a huge issue in the fashion industry, which is something that should not be overlooked. Although brands have supposedly been getting better about the rights of employees in other countries, this issue proves that they have still been treating their employees unfairly, simply in different ways.