Four Corners names Australian companies in Bangladeshi low-cost labour
Updated: Coles, Target, Cotton On and Forever New were named as retailers using low-cost labour in Bangladesh on ABC's Four Corners.
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Coles, Target, Cotton On and Forever New were named as retailers using low-cost labour in Bangladesh on last night’s Four Corners.
ABC’s Sarah Ferguson travelled to the country’s capital Dhaka, where a number of workers revealed big Australian brands including Rivers, Coles, Target and Kmart ordered clothes from factories in Bangladesh that did not meet international standards.
The revelations come just months after international outcry over the tragic building collapse in Rana Plaza, which killed more than 1,000 people and highlighted the plight of the nation’s garment workers.
Two workers said they were paid $3 a day working for Australian brand Rivers, and say they are put under intolerable pressure.
“The system is – how many pieces I have delivered in an hour? If I can’t meet it, the abusive language starts,” Shahanas said.
“They slap us on the face, on the head and on the back.
“Some workers cry at that time. They cry while they’re working,” Salma said.
Four Corners travelled to the outskirts of Dhaka to speak to the manager of Shahanas and Salma’s factory, Eve Dress Shirts.
But the manager denied making clothes for Rivers.
Rivers also did not respond to Four Corners‘ enquiries.
Workers at the Rosita factory, which made clothes for Coles, paid its workers 22 cents per hour, according to the ABC.
“We found out that the Rosita and Megatex was owned by South Ocean, which is the largest Chinese manufacturer of sweaters in the world and they were cheating the workers in every single way imaginable,” Institute for Global Labor and Human Rights spokesman Charles Kernaghan said.
“Coles got back to us saying that as far as they know everything is fine, everything is perfect.
“Meanwhile, workers are being arrested, beaten, tortured, threatened with sexual harassment, just on and on and on. This was a miserable sweatshop.
“It doesn’t speak well of Coles; that’s for sure. I mean this is just one of those labels which doesn’t care, and they will always turn their back on the workers.”
Workers who had abandoned the eight-storey Rana Plaza building because of safety fears were forced back into it on the morning of the collapse.
Survivors of the disaster told Four Corners of their ordeal.
‘‘What I remember most is the screaming,’’ ‘‘Sujan’’ said. ‘‘I hear those screams in my dreams. They wake me from my sleep.’’
Following the collapse of Rana Plaza, retailers around the world, including parts of Coles owner Wesfarmers, have signed up to an accord to improve factory safety in Bangladesh.
UPDATE: A Coles spokesperson today said it had one supplier in Bangladesh for a small mix clothing order which will be completed in the next few weeks. It was pulling out of Bangladesh within ‘‘the next few weeks’’ and if it returned it would sign a garment industry safety accord.
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7 Responses
There have been exposes of this information about the textile industry before, not on a scale like this though, but obviously the tragedy put it back under scrutiny again, which is the only silver lining to that cloud.
Around 20 years ago, I had a friend who thought he was pretty cool because he could afford to pay ridiculous prices for his designer label clothing.
Then when i saw an expose on top designer brands using cheap overseas labour i had a good laugh about how much money my friend was spending, when it was probably made in the same factory as my Target stuff. This being the same friend who ‘borrowed’ money from his parents for a house deposit.
Big W was also mentioned.
Coles sells clothes?
Oh for goodness sake, dial down the hyperbole Pertinax.
This has been a huge issue in the international press, with a lot of big foreign brand names coming under pressure. They have enormous power to influence working conditions but they won’t do it unless they are named and shamed in the press.The Aussie companies involved tried to hide provenance from the media so well done to 4C for investigating.
I watched the first half hour of this episode, then switched to watching Live Q&A with Tony Jones. I was not surpirised at what 4 Corners found out. This is the true moral cost of cheap clothing. However i dont think it will stop. As the third world becomes more and more integrated with the world the next cheap labour fruntier will be Africa. People at large dont care about this. The reason for that is because of cost of living pressures in the necesaties, such as Food, Electricity, Water, council rates and other necessary things which people are paying for, not to mention the exorbitant costs of Technology even though most of it is made in China or Korea. This will continue no doubt. Sad but true.
Shoppers shouldn’t be making such choices, because as you point out they can’t intelligently and enforcing building and fire safety codes in Bangladesh is not their job. It is the job of the Bangladeshi government.
Four Corners, by trying to destroy the Bangladeshi textile industry, is just trying to make thousands of textile workers unemployed and homeless to appease middle class guilt. And will likely just move the problem on to another poorer country causing worse problems.
The only thing Australians can really do that will help is to support unions that will increase the ability of workers to demand better safety and an increased share of profit.
What this and found it amazing that whether it’s a cheap shirt or designer clothes its hard to tell where they are made, as in the factory conditions. And the workers get paid next to nothing.
How do we make a choice as shoppers in this country and pick the ones where workers are paid a fair wage?