UK – A month ago, Boohoo, an online clothing shop dedicated to help fight COVID-19 by offering COVID-19 test kits in partnership with Biotech, however, today their value had just dropped by a 1 billion GBP as they push to investigate claims that one of their suppliers was running a warehouse with subpar conditions and incredibly low wages- inciting the media to call it modern day slavery.
The owners of the Pretty Little Thing and Nasty Gal lines commented on how the factory was completely unacceptable and well below the applicable working standard of other factories that prompted the large online company to issue a warning to all their suppliers that they would terminate relationships with such companies run in the same manner.
The data was gathered by an undercover reporter for the Sunday Times where it was discovered that the factories were running below minimum wage for workers, no safety precautions were taken, no masks and no directives to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 in the area.
The sad part of the story was how it was the Leicester suppliers that boosted the sales numbers of BooHoo during the COVID-19 pandemic downtime for sales, even amassing a strong 150 million GBP bonus for it’s bosses. Boohoo had to take the big hit of 1 billion GBP pulled away when the issue of the factory came to light- dropping it to a 3 billion GBP company.
The factory supposedly supplying for Boohoo was named Jaswal Fashions which had been investigated not to be the people running the factory as the company had folded two years back, leaving a mysterious gap on who was operating the factory.
“Our early investigations have revealed that Jaswal Fashions is not a declared supplier and is also no longer trading as a garment manufacturer,” Boohoo said.
“We’ve got an extraordinary situation where some of the UK’s biggest, most profitable fashion brands are sourcing much of their clothing from UK factories where there is no transparency, no unions, and where they are under less scrutiny and are failing to disclose less about their supply chain than brands who source from places like Bangladesh and Cambodia.” Labor rights researcher at the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre,Thulsi Narayanasamy said.
Boohoo stated that they were doing everything in their power to right the wrongs and give back to the labor force that had helped them stay afloat.
