E-Lesson 09 - CSR (the garment industry / Rana Plaza)

Unpaid workers who left help notes in Zara clothes have received nothing

Many of workers who slipped pleas for help into the pockets of Zara clothes they made have

reportedly still not been paid despite an international outcry.

Some 140 Turkish workers at the Bravo Tekstil factory claimed they had not received three

months’ worth of back wages and severance after the factory shut suddenly in the summer of

2016 earlier this month.

It is understood the owner of the company, which made clothes for high street brands such

as Zara, Mango and Next, has disappeared.

Their plight came to light when the Clean Clothes Campaign, an activist group trying to

improve conditions in the garment industry, teamed up with the workers to slip notes into the

pockets of clothing in stores across Istanbul begging for help. The notes, in Turkish, said: “I

made the item you are going to buy, but I haven't been able to get my money!” The group

said they targeted Zara in particular because 75 per cent of the work they did was for that

country.

The news prompted outrage around the world, with 293,000 million people signing a

Change.org petition directed to Inditex, Zara’s parent company, demanding they pay the lost

wages. In response Inditex, along with Mango and Next, said they had already set up a

hardship fund for the workers which would be overseen by the global trade union for garment

workers, IndustriALL. But the garment workers said many of them had been excluded from

the fund because it was reportedly only designed to compensate the 77 workers IndustriALL

deemed “blue collar”, CBC News reported. They classified 63 workers as “white collar” –

meaning they had some seniority or did not work on the factory floor – and said this meant

they were not entitled to compensation. (…)

The Clean Clothes Campaign’s representative in Turkey, Bego Demir, said the distinction

between white and blue collars is arbitrary and illegal. (…)

Inditex has previously been vocal about the need to improve labour conditions in the garment

industry. Last month it sent out a press release about a meeting between its CEO, Pablo Isla,

and the Director-General of the International Labour Organisation, Guy Ryder, in Geneva,

Switzerland to “explore the progress made to date” on initiatives to improve conditions in

“China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, Turkey and Cambodia”.

During the meeting, Mr Isla stressed “Inditex’s firm commitment to the ILO conventions, on

which our Code of Conduct for Manufacturers and Suppliers is based, and to the United

Nations Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to decent working

conditions”. Their Code of Conduct states: “Manufacturers and suppliers shall also ensure that

wages and any other allowances or benefits are paid on time and are rendered in full

compliance with all applicable laws and specifically, that payments are made in the manner

that best suits the workers.” (…)

486 words

Caroline Mortimer, The Independent, 24 November 2017