Workers working on UK clothes for 7p an hour

Workers producing clothes for Primark face growing poverty on as little as 7p an hour for up to 80-hour weeks. But they are helping Britain’s most popular cheap fashion retailer beat the recession, the charity War on Want reveals today.

Employees calculate a worker needs £44.82 (5333 taka) a month to give their family nutritious food, clean water, shelter, clothes, education, health care and transport. Yet average workers’ pay, £19.16 (2280 taka) a month, is less than half a living wage.

War on Want warns that Primark is ignoring rising basic living costs as employees making garments in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka are now worse off than two years ago, when the charity first exposed their hardship.

Ruth Tanner, campaigns and policy director at the charity, said: “Primark, Asda and Tesco promise a living wage for their garment makers. But workers are actually worse off than when we exposed their exploitation two years ago. The UK government must bring in effective regulation to stop British companies profiting from abuse.”

War on Want contrasts the retailer’s 17 per cent profits jump to £233 million during the 12 months ending in September this year with employees on the minimum wage, £13.97 (1663 taka) a month, and all of them earning far less than a living wage.

Amid high inflation and increasing fuel costs in Bangladesh, the price of low-quality rice has rocketed by 70 per cent. And prices of other cooking items, including oil, onions, pulses, wheat and flour, have soared by 30-60 per cent.

The vast majority of employees live in small, crowded shacks, many of which lack plumbing and adequate washing facilities.

War on Want will stage a protest outside Primark’s flagship store in London’s Oxford Street this morning with its researcher Khorshed Alam, who has flown to the UK from Bangladesh. Campaigners from the charity and Alam will then go into the annual meeting of Primark’s parent company, Associated British Foods, to speak out against its sweatshops.

The report also reveals similar pay and conditions for Dhaka employees making clothes for Asda, Britain’s second-largest clothing retailer by volume, and Tesco, the UK’s biggest supermarket fashion chain.

Ifat, who toils in a factory supplying all three retailers, said: “I can’t feed my children three meals a day.”

Runa, who makes Asda and Tesco clothes, is one of many young women forced by poverty to leave her rural home to earn money to send back to her family.

She said: “My pay is so meagre that I cannot afford to keep my child with me. I have sent my five-month old baby to the village to be cared for by my mother.”

Though forced overtime is illegal in Bangladesh, employees said they were made to toil extra hours, often unpaid. Workers complained that in the fast fashion rush to produce the latest styles, many of them suffer verbal and physical abuse as they struggle to meet unrealistic targets. Primark, Asda and Tesco all claim to respect the rights of its garment suppliers to join and form trade unions. But Dhaka workers said none of their factories was unionised.

War on Want is demanding that the British government introduce regulation which ensures a living wage for overseas suppliers and allows exploited staff to seek justice in UK courts.

Fashion Victims – Full Report

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