Ads
Published
Mar 6, 2017
Download
Download the article
Print
Text size

Initiative could grant councils new powers to tackle sweatshops

Published
Mar 6, 2017

A plan to give local councils new powers to shut down sweatshops is being considered as fresh evidence reveals the poor working conditions that factory workers in the UK have to endure.


AFP


According to the Telegraph, the Human Rights Committee is testing whether local councils should be given the power to stamp out abusive factories in the same way they can close down a restaurant if it has been found to breach food and safety guidelines.

“The industry is supportive of such a move because well-run factories are being undercut by those that use desperately unscrupulous practices,” said chairman Harriet Harman MP.

The project comes alongside an inquiry into the working conditions of many British clothing factories, which revealed evidence of an “epidemic” of British workers being poorly treated.

Harman told The Telegraph she toured suppliers in Leicester, which account for a third of the UK’s textile manufacturing output, and found that between a third and three-quarters of factory workers in the region were being paid below the minimum wage, working in unsafe conditions or without contracts.

It follows a recent report that British workers are being paid as little as £3 an hour – less than half the legal minimum wage of £7.20 – to manufacture clothes for mass-market brands including New Look and River Island.

The two high street favourites have said that suppliers sub-contracted work to factories which they had blacklisted, without their knowledge.

Copyright © 2024 FashionNetwork.com All rights reserved.