Our all-up labor rates in Bendigo, with all the add-ons, are about $28 an hour. You go to China and it's less than 50 cents an hour". (Textile jobs under threat. 2003) It is not that the government is not aware of the situation in the country and has already allocated $575 million for the textile, clothing and footwear sector under the Strategic Investment Program as stated by the minister for Industry, Tourism and Resources. His statement said "Australia's $9 billion textile, clothing and footwear manufacturing industries can now apply for investment and R&D assistance under the package which has been closely and extensively negotiated with industry players". (Australia: Textile, clothing & footwear sector investments worth AU $575mn approved, 2005) .

             But this does not seem to have helped the workers as in one case, the workers sacked by National Textiles on January 21st are still on a 24 hour picket outside their factory and that is located about 170 kilometers north of Sydney. There are 342 workers and the claimed dues are on account of entitlements which are not paid consisting of leave on a yearly basis, sick leave, long service, redundancy payments and superannuation. (Sacked Australian textile workers picket for $11 million in unpaid entitlements) Regarding TCF, the economists at Reserve Bank have stated that about one third of the jobs lost in clothing are due to low wages and that is a total of 28,000 jobs. For footwear this amounts to 6,000 jobs lost. Well this seems to support that fair trade is the main reason for the lost jobs but they have also stated "Despite this large import effect, productivity improvements accounted for about two-thirds of the fall in employment in this sector" (Do imports cost jobs: What's wrong with fair trade?) .

             This can be seen from a comparison of the figures of 1994 and 1999 where in the case of machinery and equipment the productivity has risen by 23.