Online fast fashion giant Boohoo has said it is ending relationships with any supplier found to be acting outside its code of conduct.
An undercover reporter for The Sunday Times spent two days working in a Leicester factory called Jaswal Fashions for just £3.50 an hour, despite the fact that minimum wage for over 25s is £8.72 per hour.
He obtained video footage of himself packing Nasty Gal (a Boohoo brand) garments made in the factory. A factory foreman warned him that staff were exploited while bosses made huge profits. The owner of the group Mahmud Kamani is set to earn a £50 million bonus.
Work in the factory was carried out without proper social distancing or hygiene procedures in place, despite Leicester currently being in a localised Covid-19 lockdown.
Last week, Priti Patel, the home secretary, asked the National Crime Agency (NCA) to look into modern slavery in Leicester’s clothing factories.
Now Boohoo has said it will terminate relationships with any supplier who is found not to be acting within its code of conduct.
The retailer said it was grateful to The Sunday Times for highlighting conditions at Jaswal Fashions, which were “totally unacceptable and fall woefully short of any standards acceptable in any workplace,” as reported by Reuters.
It said its early investigations had revealed that Jaswal Fashions was not a declared supplier and was also no longer trading as a garment manufacturer, indicating that a different company was using Jaswal’s former premises.
Boohoo was already under fire last week for risking the spread of coronavirus in Leicester, after claims that factories in its supply chain told staff to go into work during lockdown despite being sick.
