Working conditions news and archive

Bangladesh protests bring production to a halt for Fashion's top brands

Levi's and H&M are among top global clothing brands to suffer production halts in Bangladesh, a garment union leader said Friday, after days of violent protests by workers demanding a near-tripling of their wages. Bangladesh's 3,500 garment factories account for around 85 percent of the South Asian country's 55 billion dollars annual exports,...

ManagementMember

Boohoo launches independent review of supply chain

Boohoo has announced it is launching an independent review of its UK supply chain following allegations of poor working conditions at its suppliers' factories in Leicester in the UK. The company, which owns brands including Pretty Little Thing and Nasty Gal, said it is also investing 10 million pounds “to eradicate supply chain malpractice” and...

BusinessFeaturedMember

India: fatal factory fire shows that workplaces are still unsafe

A deadly fire at an Anaj Mandi area factory in north Delhi killed 43 people in the early morning hours on Sunday; 16 to 20 people were injured. The story sounds only too familiar: The building in a residential area of Delhi was illegally operated as a factory that made various products, including garments. About 70 factory workers - mainly...

Fashion Featured

Top five ways consumers want brands to be more sustainable

New research suggests that over half (52 percent) of consumers in the UK and US want the fashion industry to become more sustainable, but 45 percent find it difficult to know which fashion brands are really committed to sustainability. According to a survey of 2,000 consumers commissioned by e-commerce personalisation and retail AI platform...

Fashion

H&M Group expands cooperation with International Labor Organization

UN’s International Labor Organization (ILO) and H&M Group have announced the expansion of their partnership to improve working conditions in the textile and garment industry. According to a statement by H&M, the two parties have been working together since 2001 in Cambodia and Bangladesh to bring governments, factory owners, unions and workers...

ReportMember

Sports Direct employee turnover rate 3 times higher than average

Sports Direct's reputation has received yet another blow, as its annual report has shown the UK's largest sporting goods retailer struggles to hold onto staff. The retailer's staff turnover rate rose by more than three percentage points last year to 22 percent according to its annual report - a figure which is nearly three times higher than the...

Fashion

Uniqlo criticized for harsh working conditions in Chinese factories

Japanese fast-fashion retailer Uniqlo is under fire after Hong Kong-based non-governmental organization Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) accused their suppliers in China of submitting employees to harsh working conditions. The organization previously investigated working conditions at two of the retailer's suppliers:...

Fashion Featured

Report sheds light on appalling working conditions in spinning mills

Just when it seemed that the garment industry was on its way to becoming more responsible - with efforts by individual brands and retailers and the Bangladesh Accord and Alliance making progress - another jack-in-the-box jumps out of it, this time in the form of the very fabric clothes are made of. A new report looks at the situation at South...

Apparel

Manufacturing safety questioned in factory crash

A factory in Bangladesh that produces clothing for Matalan and Primark has collapsed, killing at least 70 people and causing injury to at least a further 200 workers. This is the latest tragic story in Bangladesh' clothing and production industry. The incident occurred when an eight story building on the outskirts of the capital Dhaka collapsed...