“Informal employment casts a shadow over Morocco as Europe’s preferred textile manufacturer”, 17 July 2025

The Moroccan textile industry has flourished over the last decade, and now directly employs more than 200,000 people, 60 per cent of whom are women. The Moroccan Investment and Export Development Agency (AMDIE) highlights the competitive costs, productivity and record lead times offered by the country’s workforce.

… Amal (not her real name, to avoid reprisals) worked for six years in a legally established Moroccan factory with a two-storey facility for around 500 employees. When the company changed hands, conditions worsened under the new employer. “We were sewing 56 pieces of clothing an hour, but he brought in people to do up to 58 or even more,” she tells Equal Times. For the women in her workshop, “this meant a lot of pressure, as well as having to make poorly finished garments”, she recalls. “Almost all of them were for Inditex and Mango. I know from the labels, most of them were for Zara.” What used to be produced in nine hours, now had to be done in eight. The change of pace “was detrimental to our health, many of our colleagues left and the workforce was reduced to around 400”. This was the start of a string of irregular staff cuts that would eventually lead to her own dismissal.

…Around 60 per cent of all production is outsourced, and “both official and informal companies outsource large orders” to these types of workshops, Lamyae Azouz, general secretary of Attawasoul, a non-profit organisation that informs workers in Tangier about their labour rights, told Equal Times.

…As IndustriAll Global Union reports, wage abuse is so widespread that the minimum wage is only paid in factories with unionised workers.

…In the Moroccan textile industry, people work eight to nine hours a day, including Saturdays and public holidays. Toilet breaks can be taken once or twice a day and lunch breaks last half an hour. “I put up with it for my family’s sake,” says Amal. “My factory didn’t have a rest area. We would put cardboard down on the street to sit and eat, no matter how hot or wet it was. There was no hygiene inside.”

…The company responded to her valid complaints with harassment and insults.

…Accidents related to poor working conditions are also common in Morocco’s informal textile workshops. “There is often heat stress in summer (April to September), as the workers are allowed to drink water but not to rest,” says Azouz. “There is hardly any space for ironing, and there’s often problems with damp and overcrowding”, which facilitates the spread of diseases, while “the dust from the fabrics causes pulmonary ailments or allergies”.

…The high level of informal employment is a serious obstacle to unionisation, in an environment where there is no freedom of association without reprisals, and in a context in which Moroccan trade unions have not succeeded in stopping new strike legislation, in force since March, which disables this right in practice and severely restricts trade union freedoms. It is against this background that joining a union easily leads to threats and dismissals for Morocco’s women textile workers, or “false accusations” such as work flow obstruction or lack of productivity, along with “fewer hours and isolation from the other workers”, explains Koubia.

…The employer declared bankruptcy and owes rent, wages and numerous payments to various carriers and suppliers, so the workers are unsure whether they will ever receive anything.