The Cheap Brand Primark Openly Discussed Supply Chain Exploitation And " Slavery "

With the global trend of supply chain pparency, more and more international

The brand began to discuss publicly about the supply chain ethics and sweatshops that had been avoided.

On Wednesday, at the annual Trust Women Conference conference, British / Irish cheap brands.

Penneys (hereinafter referred to as Primark) Paul Lister, director of moral trade, once again appealed to the supply chain to eliminate slavery when talking about supply chain problems.

He also said at the meeting that "low cost means exploitation" is a wrong concept.

Associated British Foods PLC (ABF.L), a comprehensive conglomerate in the United Kingdom

Primark has been accused by sweatshops. Especially in April 25, 2013, a eight storey building in the suburb of Dhaka, Bangladesh, collapsed, causing many people to be buried and eventually caused an extraordinarily serious accident involving about 1200 people.

There are five garment factories in the eight story building: New Wave Style, Ether Tex, Canton Tech Apparel, New Wave Bottoms, and New.

The garments they manufacture are supplied by the following fashion brands: Mango in Spain, Benetton in Italy, Benetton, Ireland / British Primark, Matalan, Bonmarche, C&A in Holland, KIK in Germany, Carrefour in Carrefour in France, Joe Fresh in Canada, and WAL-MART in the United States, Wal-Mart, Bonmarche, and so on.

The collapse of the Dhaka building is an inflection point for the apparel industry to pparently supply the chain and improve the environment and living conditions of the supply chain workers.

After the incident, Zara parent Inditex SA (ITX.MC) Indo Textile Group and H&M Hennes Mauritz AB Hayne (HMb.ST) Maurice group began to call for increasing the wages of the supply chain workers, and actively negotiated and cooperated with the governments and ILO in Southeast Asia, hoping to promote the supply chain of the apparel industry to be more pparent and ethical.

Because of the extremely complex supply chain problem, international brand action is not uniform.

For example, the fast fashion group Gap Inc. (NYSE:GPS) in Dhaka has refused to solve problems through the form of international organizations. Primark is also a slow response company.

However, since the beginning of 2016, both Primark and Gap Inc. (NYSE:GPS) have changed their attitudes.

At the end of March this year, Paul Lister said that Primark had increased its supply chain ethics review team from 65 to 83, hoping that this would make the company's supply chain ethical and workers free from exploitation.

Primark currently has about 1700 suppliers worldwide, 100 of which are in Turkey.

Due to the influx of large numbers of Syria refugees into Turkey, Turkey's clothing supply chain has become the focus of attention in the past year, and the clothing supply chain in Turkey has also been constantly breaking out of illegal employment of refugees and the use of refugee child labour.

At the end of October, BBC broadcast the documentary "Undercover: The Refugees Who Make Our Clothes", which revealed that a large number of clothing brands used Syria refugee child laborers to make garments in Turkey. Although most of them were caused by suppliers, none of the international zero sale groups as management suppliers could be exonerated. They must shoulder the proper regulatory responsibilities.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, Syria's refugees are engaged in the production of clothing by including British online retailer ASOS PLC (ASC.L) and British department store Marks & Spencer Group PLC (MKS.L) Marsha general store M&S, while the illegal use of adult Syria refugee jobs includes Spanish retailers Zara and Mango.

As early as 2015, the labor organization Business & Human Rights Resource Centre (referred to as BHRRC) found that Swedish retailers Hennes Mauritz AB (HMb.ST) Hein Morris and British clothing retailer, Next Next (Human), used Syria child labor in the supply chain of Turkey.

For the above situation, Paul Lister claimed at the beginning of this year that Primark has increased the number of double suppliers to 100 suppliers in Turkey this year, so far no refugees have been found.

Paul Lister said that after the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which caused about 1200 deaths in 2013, the company is more open to the supply chain problem. He said the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory building is a warning bell for the retail industry.

In order to cater for the pparency of global supply chain, the Gap Inc. Inc. group also began disclosing its supplier information in September this year.

According to the supply chain information disclosed by the US group, in 2014, the group has 1083 supplier factories worldwide, 968 of which are located in Greater China, South Asia and Southeast Asia, and have small factories in Europe and North America.

According to the information disclosed by Gap Inc., the factory environment of the three major suppliers market is far less than that of Europe and North America.

In the information disclosure of supply chain, H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB Hayne Maurice group is the earliest practitioner. The Swedish group has always been in the forefront of the industry in terms of corporate social responsibility and sustainable development.

In addition, the Nike group, the American sports brand, is also the first large retailer to disclose supply chain information.

However, due to the fact that there is a lot of sweatshops in the supply chain, the news of "sweatshops" that are more pparent in the supply chain tend to be correspondingly more frequent.

In fact, is there no "sweatshop" or "sweatshop" in the luxury goods industry less than that in the fast fashion industry? Obviously not necessarily.

In April 2016, NGO organized Fashion Revolution to launch the annual Fashion Revolution Week. At the same time, the organization also published the Fashion Transparency Index fashion pparency index report with the Ethical Consumer organization, taking stock of the pparency of supply chain in major global market groups.

The report shows that the supply chain of "sweatshop" frequent popular brands and fast fashion brands is the most pparent, far higher than the luxury goods industry.

Among them, the French company Chanel SA Chanel's supply chain is the most dark, totally opaque, with a full score of 100 points, the Chanel supply chain pparency is only 10 points, the worst among 40 companies.

Among the 10 worst companies, Chanel SA's SA Herm s International SCA (HRMS.PA), Hermes International Group, has a dark supply chain of second, with just 17 points, while Italian company Fendi Fendi and its parent company LVMH SE (MC.PA) score 19, parallel to the supply chain third of the dark fashion group; LVMH (Prada) and the American light luxury group, the total score is 21 points, the supply chain fifth black fashion group.

Levi 's parent company Levi Strauss supply chain is the most pparent in 40 companies, scoring 77; followed by the world's largest and second largest apparel group Zara, Bershka, Don Morris and Pull & Bear and other fast fashion brand parent company Inditex SA India Textile Group and H&M H&M & amp; Strauss group, two companies scored 76 and second pparent; 69 German sporting goods group Adidas (Group) Adidas group is third pparent company.

The first "Fashion Transparency Index fashion pparency index" report is based on the five major indicators of the supply chain: policy commitment, review remedies, traceability, collaboration and governance.

The score covers four points, 0-25 points, 26-50 points, 51-75 points, and 76-100 points.

0-25 points indicate that there is basically no supply chain information that is open to the public. 26-50 points out that the company seems to be interested in improving the supply chain, but there is very little public information. The 51-75 point indicates that the company is leading the other companies in the policy commitment and audit reports, but also makes the information available to the supply chain public. However, 76-100 points out that the company has traced the source and remedial measures to the supply chain, and also fully disclosed the information of the supply chain and exchanged and collaborate with the industry.

According to the world clothing and shoe net, at the end of November, it commented on the current trend of supply chain pparency, and said that its retail group Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. (9983.T) 6288.HK (6288.HK) fast marketing group was slow in disclosing supply chain information.

The Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. fast marketing group, which owns Uniqlo UNIQLO, is the largest clothing group in Asia, and human rights organizations have long accused the group of extremely poor factory conditions in China, Kampuchea and other Asian countries.

In early 2015, Uniqlo UNIQLO was accused of having multiple sweatshops in China's supply chain. Subsequently, the Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. fast marketing group issued a statement in English, simplified and traditional Chinese, saying that it attached great importance to the above problems. However, according to the survey results, "it is very regrettable to find that some of the problems in the report that the two factories involve overtime work are indeed facts."

Fast Retailing Co. Ltd. has also admitted in the group's supply chain report that the problems in China's supply chain began to increase over the past two years, including helping young people forge age and tampering with overtime records.

In the "Fashion Transparency Index fashion pparency index" report, Uniqlo UNIQLO's supply chain pparency is also ranked the top of the four fast fashion brands.

Because Primark has always been a cheap tactic, the group has been accused of being "sweatshop" in the fashion industry.

On Wednesday, Paul Lister defended the company that served itself at the Trust Women Conference conference.

He pointed out that the main reason why the group can reduce costs and sell cheap products is not to advertise advertising, reduce marketing costs and buy economies of scale.

However, Paul Lister also acknowledged that the problem of supply chain is very complex, and it is a process that needs to be constantly identified and eradication.

Although there are traceability procedures for major suppliers, the problem becomes more complex and difficult to solve once the level two, three or even lower level production plants are involved, and sweatshops usually occur on the secondary supply chain.

Over the past 5 years, Primark has broken out a lot of "sweatshops" news, and British consumers have found help letters from Primark products.

At the end of 2015, consumer Shahkiel Akbar found a Chinese rescue letter in a black cotton stockings of men recently purchased at a shop in Primark Newcastle, UK.

Although the content of the letter does not involve sweatshops, it clearly describes the origin of the "grievances" of the victims themselves, and the date of the pen is 2015 June 22nd, which shows that the letter is independent of the previous rescue information event.

Just last week, another consumer said his father had a letter from a Primark store in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, England.

In 2014, two consumers found "Forced to work exhausting hours (forced long time painstaking work)" and "Degrading sweatshop conditions (degrading working environment)" in the dress purchased from Primark Swansea branch.

At that time, the brand explained that the two dresses were from Romania and India suppliers, and they were made independently by two factories separated by thousands of miles. The only similarity was that they were sold in stores in Swansea, Primark, in 2013.

As for the Chinese handwritten rescue letter suspected of being from a prison in Hubei, Belfast, which was found in Primark trousers pocket by consumers in Northern Ireland in 2011, Primark was only responding to the investigation.

It is still uncertain whether the above Primark rescue letter is a real letter of rescue or a practical joke.

However, it is certain that no matter whether the letter is genuine or not, it is impossible to disguise the fact that there is a lot of sweatshops in the apparel supply chain.

At the end of last month, short video platform pear video released "undercover shooting clothing factory child labor" video, through unannounced visits and candid camera to expose the phenomenon of large-scale child labor in garment processing industry in Changshou City, Jiangsu Province, and the use of violent means in the process of use, the situation is extremely bad, and the old factory board and intermediary have used child labor to form "industrial chain".

More interesting reports, please pay attention to the world clothing shoes and hats net.