Can’t answer that question? Neither can many of the fashion brands making your clothes.

A new report by aid and development organisation Baptist World Aid Australia and anti-trafficking campaign Not For Sale Australia has found few companies can trace where their products come from—and who is making them—all the way along their supply chain.

Brands including David Jones, Lacoste, Rivers, Supre and The Specialty Group (which owns Millers and Katies) were graded as worst in the report.

They either failed to have publicly-available corporate social responsibility policies and standards for their supply chain, or fell short in their standards for responsible purchasing, monitoring of suppliers or supporting the rights of their supply chain workers.

The report, the first of its kind in Australia, examines the ethical standards of the fashion industry, grading the systems fashion brands have in place to protect the workers in their supply chain from exploitation, forced labour and child labour.

Gershon Nimbalker, co-author of the report and Advocacy Manager for Baptist World Aid, says that 20 years ago companies in the fashion industry claimed no responsibility for workers at the entry levels of their supply chain, like raw materials (cotton farming, for example) and textile production (eg. embroidery, knitting, leather tanning). That is changing, but it’s a slow process.

“The supply chain doesn’t end at manufacturing, at the cut-make-trim phase,” says Nimbalker. “You do have a responsibility all the way down that line, especially when you’re working in countries that may not have the institutions to ensure the safety of workers.”

“One of the most troubling facts revealed by the research was that few companies actually knew all the suppliers responsible for producing the clothes they sold. While 39 per cent of companies knew all, or almost all, of the suppliers involved at a factory level [manufacturing], that number dropped dramatically to seven per cent at the raw materials stage of production. That’s worrying for us, as that’s where some of the biggest offences of forced labour occur.”

“If companies don’t know, or don’t care, who’s producing their clothes, it’s much harder to know whether workers are exploited or even enslaved,” said Nimbalker.

Nimbalker gave examples of abuse at the textile and raw material level of production, to illustrate why companies need to look beyond their manufacturing plants and deeper into the supply chain in order to protect  workers’ rights.

“At the fabric [textile] level, for instance, there’s a situation called the “Sumangali Scheme” where girls are promised traineeships that will end with a dowry or enough money to start their lives. But two or three years into this ‘traineeship’, they’re let go without getting paid what they were promised.

In Uzbekistan, the world’s fourth largest exporter of cotton and described by Nimbalker as one of the worst offenders in terms of modern slavery, forced and child labour is a major issue.

“The Government does whatever it takes to keep the money coming in, including sending up to 100,000 children every year out of school to work harvesting cotton. They work in the worst conditions, often with little or no access to clean water and there is intense pressure to hit cotton quotas, so much so that we hear many stories of suicide.”

While Baptist World Aid says it’s hesitant to suggest consumers should boycott fashion labels on the basis of supply chain practices, they are asking fashion brands themselves to boycott Uzbekistani cotton until the Government agrees to clean up its act. Companies with an existing boycott on Uzbekistani cotton include Cotton On, Just Group, Kmart, Sussan Group and Target.

“We’re hoping that companies take notice, see what others are doing in the industry, and start moving in the right direction. Their actions can transform lives on the ground around the world, making sure that there are fewer people in situations of forced labour and making sure workers are paid a wage that they can survive on.”

Baptist World Aid has developed an Ethical Fashion Guide, designed to help Australian shoppers make more informed decisions about the clothes they buy.

“What we’d love to see is people becoming more aware of which companies are taking action against exploitation and trying to preference those companies doing a good job. And then they should look at companies that aren’t, and communicate with them on how they could do more: write a letter, join an advocacy group.”

Nimbalker says despite previous claims to the contrary, it is feasible for companies to know their suppliers and to check those suppliers for ethical practices. “There are examples of companies set up with the express purpose of being ethical. Companies can do it. The problem at the moment is severe underinvestment in this.”

Fashion brands that were graded the highest overall, with established systems throughout their supply chain enabling them to prevent and address worker exploitation, include 3 Fish, Etiko (both fair trade certified clothing companies), Hanes, Inditex (who own Zara) and Timberland.

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