The sacked garment workers had fought for fair compensation since the factory closed in March 2021
More than 1,000 sacked Thai garment workers who made bras at a factory supplying lingerie firm Victoria’s Secret have received a landmark $8.3m settlement, labour rights activists have said.
Brilliant Alliance Thai closed down its Samut Prakan factory in March 2021 after going bankrupt.
Continue reading...Landmark agreement to protect garment workers from violence follows last year’s murder of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a Dalit woman
H&M has signed a legally binding agreement with one of its largest Indian clothing suppliers that pledges to end sexual violence and harassment against women on the factory floor after the murder of a young garment worker by her supervisor last year.
In January 2021, Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 20-year-old Dalit woman, was found dead on farmland near her family home after finishing a shift at Natchi Apparel, a factory making clothes for H&M in Kaithian Kottai, Tamil Nadu.
Continue reading...Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts
Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.
Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.
Continue reading...UK Export Finance used £5.24bn of taxpayer money to fund overseas energy and infrastructure ventures – despite its own review raising concerns
The British government has provided more than £5bn in the past three years to overseas energy and infrastructure projects linked to labour abuses and environmental damage, according to documents and interviews with workers.
The funding – a combination of loans and guarantees – comes from the government’s export credit agency, UK Export Finance (UKEF), a government department to help UK companies access business contracts overseas.
Continue reading...Unions say strike over ‘anti-worker’ government policies a success despite limited impact, with far fewer than predicted taking part
An estimated 50 million people joined India’s two-day national strike this week, a fraction of the number expected to protest.
Bank, factory and public transport workers disrupted services in six states on Monday and Tuesday, but the strike had limited impact across the rest of the country.
Continue reading...Campaigners say not enough is being done to prevent loss of life and the causes of death are not being properly investigated
As many as 10,000 migrant workers from south and south-east Asia die every year in the Gulf countries, according to a report by a group of human rights organisations.
More than half of the deaths are unexplained, said the report, and are commonly recorded as due to “natural causes” or “cardiac arrest”. But Gulf states are failing properly to investigate why so many migrant workers are dying.
Continue reading...Abuse of the policing body’s ‘red notice’ system is blamed as an activist is forced to return to life in prison in the Gulf state
Marko Štambuk arrived at Belgrade district prison on a Monday morning in late January, only to be told his client was no longer inside. “Immediately I knew something had happened,” he said.
Štambuk, a lawyer, had spent the previous Friday frantically obtaining an injunction from the European court of human rights (ECHR) demanding Serbian authorities halt the extradition of his client, Ahmed Jaafar Mohamed Ali, a Bahraini dissident. This banned the Serbian authorities from extraditing Ali until late February, and warned them that doing so would constitute a rare breach of the European convention on human rights.
Continue reading...Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears
India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.
Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.
Continue reading...Glove manufacturer Supermax has repeatedly won NHS contracts during the pandemic, despite claims of forced labour. Now, a group of former workers are seeking justice
“I don’t have any dreams for the future because every dream depends on money,” says Resham, a 45-year-old from Banke, a district in Nepal bordering the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. “Time is passing and I’m getting older. Whatever comes my way, I will face it and go ahead with life.”
Last year, Resham returned to Nepal after spending 10 years working at Supermax, a company producing medical gloves in Malaysia. In October, the US banned imports from Supermax based on evidence “that indicates the use of forced labour”, and the month after, Canada terminated its contracts. The UK, meanwhile, has named the British subsidiary of Supermax as an approved supplier in a new £6bn contract for gloves for NHS workers.
Continue reading...Hlaing Thayar was at the centre of Myanmar’s protests, but brutal crackdowns and the collapse of the local garment industry have taken their toll
As Thitsar* walked through her neighbourhood one December morning, she was struck by its emptiness. The bamboo shacks that line the streets of Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial township on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, lay in tatters, overgrown with weeds. The vendors who once weaved through traffic had vanished, as had many of the informal settlements where they lived and the roadside tea shops where they gathered.
Streets that had once resounded with chants for democracy were now eerily silent.
Continue reading...Migrant workers employed at Expo 2020 allege confiscated passports, racial discrimination and withheld wages
Security guards, cleaners and hospitality staff at Dubai’s Expo 2020 in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are allegedly working in highly abusive conditions that may amount to forced labour, according to a human rights group.
Migrant workers employed at the international fair in the UAE – taking place now after being delayed by Covid – allege they have been forced to pay illegal recruitment fees, suffered racial discrimination and had wages withheld and passports confiscated, said the report by Equidem.
Continue reading...YTY Group accused of ‘deception, intimidation and debt bondage’, says it is ‘working to improve conditions of migrant workers’
US authorities have banned disposable gloves from a manufacturer in Malaysia over allegations it uses forced labour, sending the share price of global protective equipment group Ansell into a tailspin.
The customs and border protection unit of the US Department of Homeland Security said it had “information that reasonably indicates the use of forced labor in YTY Group’s manufacturing operations” and banned the importation of gloves made by the company.
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Continue reading...Farm workers from south Asia describe exploitative conditions at the heart of Europe’s soft fruits industry
Three days after Sagar* arrived as a worker in Portugal from Nepal, he began to worry he had made a terrible mistake. “I had expectations to get good work, good money,” he says. “But the reality was different.”
The only job Sagar, 21, could find was on one of the country’s berry farms in Odemira, a rural region on the south-west coast. Earning less than the legal minimum wage to work 16-hour days in 40C heat, he knows he is being exploited. But quitting could jeopardise his residency application – and that’s a risk he cannot afford to take.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Workers in Portugal picking berries ending up on the shelves of Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco allege exploitative conditions
Farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries destined for Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for less than the minimum wage, according to a Guardian investigation.
Speaking anonymously, for fear of retribution from their employers, workers claimed the hours listed on their payslips were often fewer than the hours they had actually worked.
Continue reading...Government report on post-Brexit recruitment finds staff citing no health and safety equipment, racism and unsafe accommodation
Seasonal workers in the UK on a post-Brexit pilot scheme to harvest fruit and vegetables were subjected to “unacceptable” welfare conditions, according to a government review.
Issues cited by workers included a lack of health and safety equipment, racism, and accommodation without any bathrooms, running water or kitchens.
Continue reading...As companies extract wealth, villagers say they see little benefit and are instead exploited in quarries, live in homes damaged by blasts and are unable to farm polluted land
A convoy of trucks laden with huge black granite rocks trundles along the dusty pathway as a group of villagers look on grimly.
Every day more than 60 trucks take granite for export along this rugged road through Nyamakope village in the district of Mutoko, 90 miles east of Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare.
Continue reading...Workers went on strike and pushed union drives in record numbers after corporations made giant pandemic profits
In 2021 workers appear to have had enough.
Amid constant claims from some industries of labor shortages as the economy recovers from Covid-19 shutdowns, workers have been pushing employers and elected officials to raise wages, improve working conditions and benefits such as paid sick leave through walkouts, protests, rallies and strikes.
Continue reading...Shortfall of 16p a day leaves children living on just rice as suppliers to Nike, Zara and H&M in Karnataka underpay by estimated £41m
Garment workers making clothes for international brands in Karnataka, a major clothing production hub in India, say their children are going hungry as factories refuse to pay the legal minimum wage in what is claimed to be the biggest wage theft to ever hit the fashion industry.
More than 400,000 garment workers in Karnataka have not been paid the state’s legal minimum wage since April 2020, according to an international labour rights organisation that monitors working conditions in factories.
Continue reading...A roundup of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Mexico to Manila
Continue reading...Faha Al-Mana responds to a report on allegations of exploitation and abuse by migrant workers in the run-up to the 2022 World Cup
Your report (‘We have fallen into a trap’: Qatar’s World Cup dream is a nightmare for hotel staff, 18 November) fails to acknowledge the progress Qatar has made to improve living and working standards for foreign workers, including those in the hospitality sector.
The impact of Qatar’s reforms is best highlighted through its numbers: over 240,000 workers have successfully changed jobs since barriers were removed in September 2020; more than 400,000 have directly benefited from the new minimum wage; improvements to the wage protection system now protect 96% of eligible workers from wage abuse; and hundreds of thousands of workers have left Qatar and returned without permission from their employer since exit permits were abolished.
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