The impact of Covid-19 on unethical practices in global supply chains

As a result of the disruptions caused by Covid-19, this research aims to understand the current state of global textile supply chains, and what impacts the pandemic has caused to the risks of modern slavery and labour exploitation.

By taking a wide scope of literature and surveys from multiple stakeholders including: industry, governmental, international, business membership, and non-governmental organisations, we hoped to gain a broad understanding of the current issues.

Our objectives were to assess the various impacts the industry has faced, what actions were taken, and what was the reasoning behind those actions. Furthermore, we wanted to evaluate what had been the result of the actions taken and how had the structure of global textile supply chains affected their resilience to the pandemic.

From this we were able to highlight the complexity of the problems currently at play with the industry and the variety of decisions being made to try and combat them, as well as the risk to workers within the system and the unpredictability of how the pandemic will unfold.