Primark are again on the receiving end of allegations relating to labour abuses in their supply chain, this time the factory involved is in the UK.  The Observer, BBC and News of the World this weekend alleged that illegal immigrants are being paid just over half the minimum wage in a Manchester-based garment firm supplying Primark. The supplier, TNS Knitwear, may have breached a number of key employment and immigration laws. Illegal Pakistani, Afghan and Indian migrant workers were allegedly being paid £3 an hour and working 12-hour days, seven days a week. TNS Knitwear supplies an estimated 20,000 garments to Primark every week. Undercover footage of the factory is available to view on the BBC website and Lucy Siegle in the Guardian has started a blog on the scandal. These allegations occur only six months after outsourcing and child labour was found in Primark’s Indian supply chain.

In response to the allegations, Primark have announced they are conducting an internal investigation into employment conditions at TNS Knitwear. Unusually, they have also published audits conducted in April and December 2008, along with the Corrective and Preventative Action Plan, on their ethicalprimark.com website.

In an agreement with the Ethical Trading Initiative Primark, members of the ETI, will remove all references to the ETI from its stores and its corporate website. An ETI spokesperson stated “We are horrified at the allegations of abuses exposed by this investigation… First, we have met with Primark and demanded that it provides us with a prompt, full and frank response to the allegations. Where they are substantiated, the company has a clear obligation to work with the suppliers concerned to put things right.  Second, we have immediately launched a formal inquiry to establish whether or not there is a systematic failure on Primark’s part to implement the ETI base code. If such a failure were established, this would be grounds for formal sanctions.”

Although Impactt does not have access to the specific findings of this investigation, our experience of working with garment and food suppliers in the UK has raised significant numbers of labour abuses.    In 22 UK audits carried out between August 2007 and July 2008, 33% of sites employed casual and temporary workers, who are more vulnerable to abuse , 35% of sites were working more than 60 hours per week (the limit set in the ETI base code) and 26% of sites failed to pay the minimum wage.

UK-based suppliers perform an important role filling shortfalls in orders and producing garments for the UK market at shorter lead times than firms based overseas. However, they are under tremendous pressure to deliver product at short notice and at competitive prices. This pressure can lead to workers’ wages being squeezed and factories working long hours. Impactt often finds that workers being paid poor wages are forced to work excessive hours in order to make ends meet.

UK-based suppliers are often assumed to be at low risk of breaching labour standards; the UK is a developed country with extensive employment regulations and protection for workers.  This case illustrates that this assumption may not be well-founded; poor labour standards and exploitation of workers not only occurs in China, India and the developing world they can happen in our own back yard.

The video presents an extremely powerful message, contrasting the lives of two children so closely.  The music adds beautifully to the sentiment and makes the video  compelling and effective.

The reach of the video is anticipated to be very wide; bloggers have been reporting that the video will be seen by an estimated 560 million households worldwide.

Explaining his involvement in the project, Thom Yorke, the lead singer of Radiohead, has been quoted as saying “I think it’s important for everyone in the West or on the high street to understand the consequences of our economic activity. You must be aware of the level of exploitation that’s going on,” Yorke said. “It’s part of our Western life, and one we should accept responsibility for. There’s no such thing as a free lunch or a free ticket to another country.”

Radiohead are planning to follow up on the video by asking activists campaigning on human trafficking to distribute information on their upcoming tour.

The video can be seen here

Musicians have a long, and sometimes controversial, tradition of supporting development agendas; just think of Bob Geldof and Live Aid or Bono‘s celebrity endorsed ONE Campaign  ‘the campaign to Make Poverty History’.  Radiohead’s efforts will undoubtedly be compared to the lead singer of Coldplay, Chris Martin‘s, very public support of Oxfam’s ‘Make Trade Fair’ campaign during which he focused on revising the inequitable trade rules between developed and developing countries. By contrast, Radiohead’s approach addresses a difficult subject, seemingly raising more difficult questions about Western consumers’ complicity in the exploitation of workers.

We are pleased that such inspirational and influential artists as Radiohead have chosen to highlight these issues. They have the ability to frame them in new and powerful ways, which can only help in spreading the message to new audiences.

For those who want to catch a glimpse of the programme, the BBC has posted some interesting clips on You Tube:

• Richard discusses wages and the barriers to education with a factory worker.
• Georgina discusses the conditions for migrant workers with a factory manager.

It is testament to the growing interest in ethical trade that the programme has been made at all, but it is far from the only ethical trade project in media at the moment. Alexa Chung is planning a similar experiment in her own sweat shop in Covent Garden, while the BBC has recently launched a website about ethical trade in the fashion industry. This new interest in ethical trade, and the BBC TV programme in particular, has created quite a stir in the blogosphere and have been the subject of several blogs.

New interest in ethical trade is always warmly received, and if media projects such as these can help change consumer attitudes to working conditions abroad, then companies will feel even more pressure to control standards in their supply chains.