MILES BRIGNALL and SARAH BUTLER
Bangladesh garment factories producing clothes
for British retailers are forcing girls as young as 13 to work up to 11 hours a
day in appalling conditions, according to an ITV documentary shown on
February 6th night.
Undercover filming by the Exposure
programme found clothes produced for Lee Cooper, BHS and other UK retailers in
factories where workers were physically and verbally abused and fire safety
ignored.
Despite promises made by retailers to
improve conditions following last year's Rana Plaza factory collapse in Dhaka,
where at least 1,130 people died and thousands more were injured, staff as
young as 13 are filmed in factories being kicked, slapped and hit with a used
fabric roll as well as abused with physical threats and insults.
Fire escapes at one factory, Vase
Apparel, are shown padlocked, even though hundreds of garment workers have died
in fires after being trapped in similar factories over the past few years.
ITV producers fitted local garment
workers with secret cameras to record the conditions. One of the women is
forced to work 89 hours over seven days at Olira Fashions in Mirpur, a district
of Dhaka. Male managers abuse younger girls who they think are not working fast
enough and exhausted staff are told they must work all night to get out a big
order. They are threatened with beatings or the sack if they don't comply.
Despite rules that under-18s can only
work five hours, many are forced to complete 11-hour days, the documentary
claims. One 14-year-old girl tells the undercover camera carrier: "We have
to work to eat."
Workers at Olira, who are seen
producing Lee Cooper jeans – which the factory boss says are destined for the
UK – earn basic pay of £30 a month, the programme claims.
At Vase, where BHS school shirts are
seen, managers were filmed coaching staff on how to answer any questions put by
inspectors who are arriving later that day from a major customer. Staff are
told to lie about their working conditions. Managers insist safety equipment
that slows production has to be used during the audit, but can be put away once
the audit is over. Staff are seen signing documents to say they received
nonexistent health and safety training that will be presented to auditors.
The revelations are embarrassing for
another retailer, N Brown, whose Southbay shirts
sold via its Jacamo website were filmed being produced at Vase. N Brown, which
also owns lingerie website Figleaves.com, played a leading role in an
international factory safety agreement put together in the aftermath of the
Rana Plaza collapse.
An N Brown staff member is seconded to
a leading role in the Bangladesh Accord on Fire & Building Safety, which
has pledged to check and rectify safety measures in over 1,000 factories in
Bangladesh.
Amid huge pressure to improve workers'
conditions in the country's £13bn garment industry, nearly 150 retailers and
brands, including Arcadia, have signed up to the accord, which aims to survey
up to 1,500 factories by October this year as well as train workers.
There is also a separate, weaker,
safety deal mostly signed by US retailers including Asda's owner Walmart, while the UK government
is backing a Bangladesh government initiative which promises to improve
conditions in factories not covered by the other two projects.
N Brown said it had a contract with
Vase's sister company Basic Shirts but had terminated that deal after being
contacted by the Exposure team.
It said in a statement: "The
conditions found at Vase Apparels are wholly unacceptable, illegal and morally
reprehensible. We were not aware that any of our products were being made at
Vase Apparels. The work had been contracted to Basic Shirts, which operates out
of a different factory entirely, and which we had previously audited as part of
our sourcing procedures."
Arcadia said that it had been informed
that some of its goods had been stored at Vase but made elsewhere at an
accredited supplier which owns other factories in Bangladesh.
The company said: "We have
carried out a full investigation with our supplier The Fielding Group Ltd, who
has categorically confirmed to us that no BHS goods have been made at Vase
Apparels.
"Our group operates in over 40
countries and arranges inspections of hundreds of factories each year. We take
our responsibilities seriously in all the countries our suppliers source
from." ITV said Lee Cooper declined to be interviewed for the programme,
and rejected an offer to view the footage. Lee Cooper's parent firm Iconix did
not respond to the Guardian's request for a comment.
In a brief statement to ITV, it said:
"We employ a strict set of rules to ensure our licensees source
responsibly and can confirm that this production is either counterfeit or
unauthorised.
"We will take all steps to
eliminate the unlawful production of Lee Cooper branded products."
The owner of the Vase factory said
that garments were sometimes brought to Vase from other factories for
presentations and buyers meetings. It told ITV it carried out "ethical
compliance audits" to ensure worker safety. The Olira owners told the
programme: "We don't use child labour" but said
another factory in the same building had been using children.
First published in The
Guardian, February 6, 2014
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