Clean Clothes Campaign published a report, stating that they have found strong violations of working rights by the textile producers for the German discounters Lidl, Aldi and KiK. After earlier publications about their labour circumstances, Lidl and KiK promised to do better and started to organise trainings in social standards with their producers. The CCC interviewed 162 workers. In their following publication, the Clean Clothes Campaign concluded that workers rights violations and human rights violations are still daily practice for the seamstresses.

Sandra Dusch Silva from the Christian Initiative Romero and one of the coordinators of the publication shares a few ideas of how dicounters could bring about change and states “We need a structural change here. What these companies have done until now is not sufficient. The system itself has to change. They should change their buying practices. They should change the way the audits take place. They should become part of a multi-stakeholder initiative. The trainings should be optimized, until now only the middle management had access to the trainings. Also the workers should have access here.”

After the publication, Lidl and Kik showed their willingness to talk with representatives of the Clean Clothes Campaign. Until now, Aldi did not respond at all. Lidl stated to Spiegel: “We take this very serious. But the living and working circumstances in developing countries can’t be compared with European standards.”

It might still be a big challenge to bring the discounters to the structural change that the Clean Clothes Campaign demands. After all, aren’t the discounters themselves the problem?, as the Berliner Zeitung concludes pointy. Those who want to sell cheap have to buy cheap. That is a matter also consumers should ask themselves: “who actually pays the price when I shop as cheap as possible?”