Fashion retailers such as Boohoo and Quiz should not abandon their suppliers in Britain over labour abuses but support them to improve working conditions, advocates said on Tuesday, amid growing scrutiny of garment factories in the city of Leicester. British brands sourcing from Leicester, central England, have been scrambling to respond this month following campaigner and media reports that some of their suppliers had underpaid workers and failed to protect them from COVID-19.
Boohoo and Quiz have vowed to investigate their supply chains and improve operations after reports that factory workers were being paid as little as 3 pounds ($3.80) an hour – less than half the minimum wage in Britain – to make their clothes. Quiz announced on Monday it had suspended one supplier that had used a sub-contractor “in direct contravention of a previous instruction”, while Boohoo last week said it had cut ties with two suppliers for unspecified reasons.
Yet activists and analysts said such measures only benefited the brands while putting jobs at risk, dissuading suppliers from raising concerns over working conditions with their buyers, and ultimately leaving endemic abuses in Leicester to go unchecked.Britain’s anti-slavery tsar Sara Thornton last week said brands should not dump suppliers “at the first sign of trouble”. Boohoo and Quiz were not immediately available to comment.
Simply cutting off suppliers over issues with subcontractors only creates more problems, said Nigel Venes, strategic lead for apparel and textiles at the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a group of unions, firms and charities promoting workers’ rights. Exploitation stays largely hidden as workers in Leicester – many of whom come from South Asia – are unlikely to speak out, campaigners say, often because they lack the right to work or live in Britain and fear being fired, arrested or deported.
Activists and academics have also called for measures from more funding for labour inspections to laws requiring companies to publish supplier lists and details of audits, and conduct human rights due diligence in their supply chains.Last week, authorities including police, immigration officials and health and safety inspectors said they had found no evidence of modern slavery in initial visits to factories in Leicester, with more inspections planned in the coming weeks.
Source:Thomson Reuters Foundation
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