Companies now queue up to promote their sustainability credentials. The website for Tesco, for example, one of the biggest companies by revenue in the UK, is loaded with phrases like “local community,”“mental wellbeing,” and “protecting our forests.” But when it comes to supply chains, many industries fail to ensure both people and planet aren’t treated like slaves in the service of corporate greed.
This week, 130 migrant factory employees accused Tesco of human rights abuses in a letter from their law firm, Leigh Day. The employeesworked in a garment factory in Mae Sot, Thailand, between 2017 and 2020, making jeans and other clothing for Tesco’s F&F label. They report a plethora of abuses including: pay less than half Thai minimum wage; 99-hour work weeks and no complaining under threat of blacklisting; unsanitary housing with concrete floors to sleep on and no doors, locks, or even ceilings; confiscation of documents and bank cards; and no sick pay, days off or overtime pay. The letter says employees didn’t leave because they were trapped in debt spirals that kept them locked into their jobs.
Named in the claim are Tesco itself, the local distributor it owned at the time, and Intertek, a UK-headquartered auditing firm on which Tesco relied for social audits, basing the decision to use the Mae Sot factory, V.K Garments, on the results of those...
Pakistan on April 22, Thursday urged the United Nations to call upon India to restore full implementation of the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), warning that New Delhi’s “illegal” decision to hold the ...