According to a research released on Wednesday, major multinational fashion brands like Zara, H&M, and GAP exploit Bangladeshi garment industry employees, with some of them engaging in unethical practices and paying the suppliers less than the cost of production.
In spite of the widespread pandemic and escalating prices, many workers in the 1,000 Bangladeshi factories who produced clothing for international brands and merchants during the COVID pandemic reported receiving the same wages.
According to a survey conducted by Aberdeen University and the advocacy organization Transform Trade, more than half of the garment factories encountered at least one of the following: order cancellations, payment refusals, price decreases, or delayed payment for items.
According to the report, “Such unfair trading tactics influenced suppliers’ employment policies, leading to worker churn, job losses, and reduced wages.”
37 percent of the 1,138 brands and retailers mentioned in the survey, including Zara’s Inditex, H&M, Lidl, GAP, New Yorker, Primark, Next, and others, were alleged to have used unfair business methods.
The report also discovered that, after they reopened following the March and April 2020 lockdown, one in five factories had difficulty paying the required minimum wage.
It also discovered that while some businesses insisted on price reductions for clothing purchased before the pandemic began in March 2020, others stood their ground despite skyrocketing expenses and unrelenting inflation.
The study featured some companies’ reactions.
According to Inditex, it has “assured payment for all orders already placed and in the manufacturing stage and worked with financial institutions to allow the provision of loans to suppliers on advantageous conditions.”
Lidl, a chain of German supermarkets, stated that it took the “accusations very seriously” and that it “takes its responsibility towards workers in Bangladesh and other countries where our suppliers produce very seriously and is committed to ensuring that core social standards are complied with throughout the supply chain.”
Due to the pandemic, Primark claimed to have made “the extraordinarily difficult choice in March 2020 to cancel all orders which had not yet been delivered.”
In order to prevent unfair business practices, the report suggested creating a fashion watchdog that would make sure “that buyers/retailers cannot dump disproportionate and inappropriate risks onto their suppliers and that retailers and brands conform to the rules of fair commercial operations.”
An energy crisis at home that threatened to scuttle the country’s epidemic recovery in August dealt a twin blow to Bangladesh’s clothing sector.
Major international retailers, including H&M, Inditex, Fast Retailing’s Uniqlo, Hugo Boss, and Adidas, reached a two-year agreement with Bangladeshi garment workers and factory owners in the same month, extending a prior agreement that holds retailers accountable if their factories do not adhere to labor safety standards.
After the Rana Plaza complex collapse in 2013, the deadliest catastrophe in the history of the garment industry, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,100 garment workers, the exploitation of workers and lax labor safety norms have come to light.
The European Union issued a warning to customers to avoid treating their clothing as disposable goods and announced efforts to combat the polluting usage of fast fashion sold on the mass market.
