Textile firms have been paying UK workers £3 per hour, according to TV probe
The current national living wage demands employers pay at least £7.20 staff aged 25 and over [Image: Nick Ansell/PA].
What do you think?
It seems to This Writer that these firms are bending over backward to avoid the appearance of having broken the law by employing subcontractors who also broke the law. Isn’t that unethical?
Who tells these firms the difference between right and wrong?
Textile firms making products for fashion retailers such as River Island, New Look, Boohoo and Missguided are paying their UK workers between £3 and £3.50 an hour, Channel 4’s Dispatches [alleged].
The national living wage, the legal minimum, currently stands at £7.20 an hour for workers aged 25 and over.
Source: Textile firms paying UK workers £3 per hour, investigation finds | Society | The Guardian
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
They are responsible for the subcontracting and have earned their profits. Now they can pay the wages of those workers who were cheated, out of those profits or face prosecution.
Why haven’t HMRC been onto this? Surely even back-street outfits like these have audited accounts and have to prepare quarterly VAT and annual tax returns? The other explanation is that the workers are being unknowingly employed in the black economy where wages are paid in cash together with a bogus “wage slip”. No NI contributions could loss of pension later in life.
Well, here you have it, proof of this saying: *The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that’s also a hypocrite! ” Tennessee Williams
Would have preferred some more deeper digging and info to find who was making the money for garments that were very cheap at the tills. Even the subbies were probably screwed down on their manufacturing price…what ever that was. Would have been good to know just how much the garments would have to increase to pay the min wage per hour….they were a good price on the rail so surely it would not increase the price that much…would it?
The shops were making the money.
The shops may have been making money, but they are not responsible for the subcontracting of the work by the supplier, so legally they are not responsible, and ethically you can blame the consumer as much as the retailers. One can only surmise that the manufacturers, who sell these items wholesale were cognisant of how the subcontractors paid their staff but once again it would be difficult to prove, so clearly the subcontractors who are breaking the law should be the lace where you start to prosecute. Maybe if society wasn’t so throw away, with the idea that you wear it once and can’t use it again, there would not be market that makes this sort of behaviour possible.
In some of the cases, the shop and supplier were the same organisation – so they were responsible.
No – ethically you can’t blame the consumer for buying clothes at a good price. It is for the business to behave in an ethical way, before the product reaches the market.
I also think you’re well behind the times regarding the throwaway market. Most of us don’t have the cash for that kind of behaviour and have to use clothes until they wear out.
If the shops and the suppliers were joined at the hip then that would make sense and far more interesting story. . If the slavers had already been flushed out not that long ago then starting up new local manufacturers as fall guy sub contractors working ultimately for the named companies they are kept at arms length (PR and Legal wise) for any adverse publicity. A robust companies house investigation would have flushed out any cosy relationships between these companies and who owns who…profit sharing or mark up arrangements etc etc. What is disappointing having been flushed out once they are back at it again with little government local or main checking out that things are sorted and honestly conducted…..