{"id":1930,"date":"2007-09-03T17:06:48","date_gmt":"2007-09-03T16:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ethicalquote.com\/index.php\/2007\/09\/03\/the-sweatshop-high-street-more-brands-under-fire\/"},"modified":"2007-12-19T12:58:20","modified_gmt":"2007-12-19T11:58:20","slug":"the-sweatshop-high-street-more-brands-under-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/2007\/09\/03\/the-sweatshop-high-street-more-brands-under-fire\/","title":{"rendered":"The sweatshop high street – more brands under fire"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"070904_retail.jpg\"<\/a>Two of Britain’s major high street retailers launched inquiries last night into allegations that factory workers who make their clothes in India are being paid as little as 13p per hour for a 48-hour week, wages so low the workers claim they sometimes have to rely on government food parcels. Primark, the UK’s second biggest clothing retailer, and the Mothercare, the mother and baby shop, were responding to a Guardian investigation into the pay and conditions of workers in Bangalore, India, who supply several high-profile UK and US fashion brands. The investigation, which follows our report in July in which Primark, Asda and Tesco were accused of breaching international labour standards in Bangladesh, has uncovered a catalogue of allegations of Dickensian pay and conditions in factories owned by exporters who supply clothes to the UK. India’s largest ready-made clothing exporter, Gokaldas Export, which supplies brands including Marks & Spencer, Mothercare and H&M, confirmed that wages paid to garment workers were as low as \u00c2\u00a31.13 for a nine-hour day. This fails to meet their basic needs, according to factory workers and Indian unions and so falls below the minimum international labour standards promised by the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a code of conduct which sets out basic rights for employees across the supply chain. Marks & Spencer is a member of the ETI, as are Mothercare, Gap and Primark. Garment workers for factories owned by exporters who supply to Gap, Matalan and Primark, told the Guardian they were paid similar wages and regularly forced to work overtime of between six and 18 hours per week. The ETI code states that workers shall not regularly be required to work more than 48 hours per week, that overtime should be voluntary and that it should not exceed 12 hours per week. Texport Overseas, which supplies Gap and Matalan, denied that workers were forced to do overtime. Image source: Paul Sakuma\/AP \/ business.guardian.co.uk > Continue<\/a>.
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News selected by Covalence | Country: India, Bangladesh<\/span>| Company: <\/span><\/span><\/span>Primark, Asda, <\/span><\/span>Tesco<\/span><\/span><\/a>, Mothercare, Mothercare, <\/span><\/span>Marks & Spencer, H&M, Gap<\/span><\/span><\/a>, Matalan, Texport Overseas<\/span><\/span> <\/span>| <\/span>Source: The Guardian<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two of Britain’s major high street retailers launched inquiries last night into allegations that factory workers who make their clothes in India are being paid as little as 13p per hour for a 48-hour week, wages so low the workers claim they sometimes have to rely on government food parcels. Primark, the UK’s second biggest…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":665,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_post_series":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[149,53,55,110],"post_series":[],"class_list":["post-1930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-gap-inc","tag-hm","tag-marks-spencer","tag-tesco","entry","no-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1930"},{"taxonomy":"post_series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.covalence.ch\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_series?post=1930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}