The Clothes You Buy Are Stitched in 45 Degree Heat and Most Brands Are Not Even Tracking It.

The Clothes You Buy Are Stitched in 45 Degree Heat and Most Brands Are Not Even Tracking It.

 

Picture a summer afternoon in India when even a short walk feels like a punishment. Now picture standing at a sewing line for hours in that same heat. That is the reality for many garment workers who make clothes for global labels like Uniqlo and Marks and Spencer and Tesco. A new report by the NYU Stern Center for Business and Human Rights looked at ten factories across four regions of India and found that extreme heat is cutting productivity by up to ten percent in peak summer. Some parts of the country have been crossing 45 degrees Celsius. Workers are also missing more days and the damage shows up in the product too. Managers reported sweat stains on garments and dust contamination and stitching defects and sudden stoppages. India has a 39 billion dollar apparel export industry that employs an estimated 45 million people so this is not a small problem.

What shocked me most is how little the buyers are measuring. The study found that only about 35 percent of customers require suppliers to track factory temperatures even though almost all of them admit heat is a risk to production. Half the companies surveyed had not even asked their manufacturers whether heat had disrupted output. As the researchers put it you cannot manage a risk that you do not measure. Another study found that 87 percent of garment workers surveyed in India had felt symptoms of heat stress in the past year. Labour groups add that many workers sit in layers of uniforms and caps and masks with poor access to water and rest. As a psychology student I cannot ignore what this does to the mind. Heat drains focus and patience and mood and when you add tight delivery targets it becomes a quiet daily stressor that never makes it into a brand sustainability deck.

So what are factories doing about it. Many are surviving on short term fixes. A few are trying something bigger. Epic Group has built a climate adapted garment site in Odisha that spreads across 40 acres and can hold up to 10000 workers. It is designed with heat in mind from the ground up. That sounds promising but it also shows the real issue. Building cooler factories costs money and suppliers with thin profit margins say they cannot carry the whole bill. Manufacturers supplying Uniqlo and Ralph Lauren and Levi have said the labels should help pay. The report adds that suppliers would invest more in heat protection if brands required it or gave technical support or shared the cost.

Here is where the fashion world has to look in the mirror. Brands love to announce drops and collabs and conscious collections. But if the people making those clothes are collapsing in heat then the label is only a pretty cover. Some companies like Uniqlo say longer term partnerships give suppliers the confidence to invest in safer and more sustainable factories. That makes sense because nobody builds a cooling system for an order that may vanish next season. The pressure now is on brands to offer longer contracts and fair prices and treat heat as a real safety and supply chain risk and not a footnote. Worker safety cannot be an optional extra when the planet is only getting hotter.

My take is simple. We Gen Z shoppers talk a lot about thrifting and ethical fashion and asking who made our clothes. This story adds another question. Under what temperature were they made. We cannot fix a factory floor from our phones but we can keep the pressure on by asking brands to share how they protect workers and by sharing stories like this one. Fashion is fast but human bodies are not. The industry has to slow down enough to protect the hands that make it.

I could not open the Economic Times link because the site blocked access, so I built this from other reports covering the same story, including Jing Daily and coverage of the NYU Stern study. Compare the figures against the original before publishing.