This article shares testimonies of garment workers in Sri Lanka, justice movements, and how activists in the Global North can transcend and decolonise the ‘individual versus system change’ narrative when it comes to fast fashion.
Thirteen years ago, on 24 April 2013, the devastating horror of the Rana Plaza factory collapsing on the outskirts of Dhaka, Bangladesh, claimed over 1,100 lives who were mostly garment workers, leaving many injured. It exposed the lethal cost of the global fast fashion industry and sparked the outcry for accountability. Today, as we mark this anniversary, those same systemic failures echo across the region in Sri Lanka. Through a decolonial feminist lens, we see how the struggle for labour rights are shared, intersecting a complex, multidimensional crisis of global exploitation, climate breakdown, and the systemic erasures of traditional lives.
Historical lens of the apparel sector in SL
Sri Lanka primarily focused its textiles and apparel industries on the local domestic market, as the country prioritised agriculture, including tea, rubber, and coconut, as its main exports at the time. The textiles and clothing industry, which large-scale State-owned enterprises once dominated, was a key driver of export-led growth and employment generation in Sri Lanka, as in many other emerging economies. This demand meant that natural landscape had to be drastically altered, irrespective of its multidimensional consequences or long-term implications.
In 1977, along with a political and economic change, the victory of the UNP, led by Junius Richard Jayewardene, caused the liberalisation of the economic policy. The country pivoted from a self-sustaining import substitution model towards an open, market-oriented economy, aiming to attract foreign investment, making Sri Lanka a major global textile and apparel manufacturing hub, during which the Greater Colombo Economic Commission (renamed as the Board of Investment in 1978) facilitated foreign direct investment and incentivisation. Various multinational firms shifted their operations to Sri Lanka under these new promotion policies, which included the creation of export processing zones and free trade zones (FTZs) in areas such as Katunayake and Biyagama. With the rapid expansion of industrialisation and commercialisation, the once rural areas with intact natural habitats were soon transformed into booming industries and boarding houses, with increased pollution, unsafe conditions, and strain on residents and employees.
Today, the textile and apparel industries are entirely privately owned and operated. The main markets include the UK, the US of America and Europe, with evolving structures of industry over time. And this industry is Sri Lanka's largest exporter, accounting for over 40-50 per cent of the country's total export earnings, generating US $ 5.30 billion in export revenue in 2025.
Uprooted traditional lives
The Green Revolution in the 1960s dramatically transformed Sri Lanka’s environment, demanding high-yielding hybrid seeds, the high use of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, and modern machinery. This caused a fundamental shift in the agricultural landscape and the perception of natural resources within the country. Many workers, especially women, from climate-vulnerable regions such as Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Matara, Ampara, Kurunegala, Hatton, Badulla, Gampaha, Meegamuwa, etc., were forced out because traditional agricultural, plantation and fishing livelihoods have become untenable, coupled with a worsening climate, extreme weather patterns, inconsistent rainfall, resource conflict and projects disrupting local ecosystems and traditional structures.
These stable and traditional practices once sustained their families and communities for generations; however, their collapse causes immense pressure, uncertainties, stress, and health risks to those who deal with unpredictable/low yields and the mounting burden of debt to support family members. These women often carry a double burden, acting as a primary or sole economic anchor for the rural households and families left behind. Forced to seek security and adaptivity outside of their home, the factory floor is often a last resort.
Working in the FTZ: A glimpse of lived experiences
A worker, from Gampaha, now a central hub for the Katunayake FTZ, reflected on an upbringing defined by a lush, unpolluted ecosystem. Today, that ecosystem has been severely degraded. Tap water has become undrinkable, often appearing murky and oily. Due to rapid urbanisation and industrialisation, drinking water wells are often placed in dangerous proximity to sewage pits. This cramped land ownership, coupled with collapsing structures, renders the community inaccessible to natural elements and creates severe long-term health risks.
Many in the garment industry, as well as manpower daily-wage labourers, face economic burdens, social inequalities, unsafe working and living conditions, intersecting injustices, and the scarcity of basic needs, with no access to clean drinking water, which causes serious disruptions to their livelihoods and health. Furthermore, transportation costs to and from boarding houses, often marketed as a facility, are actually deducted from the worker’s monthly salary.
These garment and textile factories operate under intense conditions with rigid timeframes. Escalating production quotas and targets fall heavily on the workers, causing significant anxiety and psychological stress. Many employees report feeling overwhelmed and carrying an excessive burden to meet daily requirements.
For example, workers are often expected to stitch three items within a one-minute timeframe, averaging 180 pieces per hour. When production slows, work piles up, leading to overwhelming stress and verbal abuse from supervisors. This rarely allows adequate breaks for food/water, or basic sanitation; consequently, many are forced to sacrifice their personal rest periods just to meet their production targets.
Decolonising feminism in the imperial core:
Driving the reckless and inhospitable workers conditions is in part due to our addiction to cheap fashion. This is an addiction built on neocolonial systems of worker exploitation that is also pushing humanity to the precipice of extinction. System versus individual change debates in the context of fast fashion no longer provide or facilitate the nuance required, or the radicalism required when addressing the fast fashion industry - the stories shared at the Workers’ Commission are complete testament to the fact that our advocacy and solidarity around fast fashion must transcend these simplistic narratives, and seek labour justice, climate justice and solidarity with women becoming disabled by capitalism’s rampant desire for infinite growth on an exhausted planet.
Stopping the consumption of fast fashion continues to not be enough. Reading and hearing about the conditions of workers in Sri Lanka demonstrates our need for decolonial and anti-racist feminisms that address the root causes of these disabling working conditions and livelihoods that do not even provide the bare minimum.
The equation that fast fashion is bad for the planet is far too simplistic;
Women in the Global South have always been in the frontlines of feminist fights, yet, their voices are never heard unless they are instrumentalised. You have to uphold their voices, read their material, and re-centre their narratives.
Labour justice equals climate justice
From organising in the trade union (TU) movement, building true solidarity with climate organisers is far from frictionless. While systemically our struggles are one and the same, translating this into practice, especially when jobs are at risk from transitioning away from environmentally damaging systems, is difficult. In the UK, Heat Strike is an example of an intersectional campaign pushing for protections for workers during extreme heat, calling for a maximum working temperature, heatwave furlough schemes and climate mitigation plans. A just transition can provide a useful framing to speak to both demands from the TU and climate movements, acknowledging both the urgency of the climate crisis with the need to protect livelihoods and ensuring that no one gets left behind in the transition.
What can we do?
In the Global North, we have a responsibility to both improve our individual consumption habits, and importantly to advocate for justice for garment workers.. Lastly, learning and continuing to decolonise our activism - challenging where our knowledge comes from and seeking to build bridges between worker and climate justice movements, to amplify the daily experiences of garment workers, can move us closer to the lived impacts of what we broadly call the ‘fast fashion industry’. We all have a role to play in weaving together the threads of climate and labour justice; for the women garment workers of Sri Lanka and beyond.
Ranasinghe is in Sri Lanka and de Saram is a climate and health justice activist based in the UK
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The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication