Garment workers take legal action against UK retail group
Complaints from 130 workers who made jeans and denim jackets in a factory in Thailand could make legal history in the UK. A case against retail group Tesco and against testing and certification body Intertek could go before courts in England if they fail to settle workers’ claims for compensation.
A UK legal firm representing the Asian garment workers, Leigh Day, sent a letter before action, the first step in legal proceedings, to Tesco and Intertek in December laying out for them the details of the complaints the workers have made. Leigh Day has asked Tesco and Intertek to settle the workers’ claims and has said that if this does not happen, the workers will consider asking for a hearing in the High Court in England.
In a report about the case, The Guardian said Tesco and Intertek faced a “landmark lawsuit” and suggested this would be the first time UK-based companies would face litigation in the English courts over the treatment of workers in an overseas garment factory owned by third-party suppliers. Intertek and Tesco have both said in response that they take the workers’ complaints of poor treatment seriously, but believe they have no case to answer.
The facility was run by a supplier called VK Garments (VKG) in Mae Sot in western Thailand, just a few kilometres from the border with Myanmar. The VKG workers who have taken their legal complaint to the UK are from Myanmar.
Allegations in the letter before action include complaints that, while working at VKG between 2017 and 2020, the 130 migrant workers were paid, at most, £4 a day, which is below the legal minimum in Thailand, had to work 99 hours a week, and became “trapped in a cycle of forced labour and debt bondage”.
In a follow-up report on December 19, The Guardian quoted one of the workers as saying she had to leave two small children on their own in a VKG-owned dormitory while working in the factory. Returning to them after ten o’clock one night, she found that her seven-year-old daughter had suffered a very serious assault at the hands of another VKG employee. She and her daughter are among the 130 complainants in the case.
The newspaper quoted a Tesco spokesperson as saying about this assault: “This is an horrific incident and our thoughts go out to the victim and everyone affected by it. Had we been alerted to it at the time it took place, we would have ended our relationship with this supplier immediately.”
Intertek has said: “As a responsible business, we take the matters that have been raised very seriously. We also note these matters are currently the subject of Thai and English legal proceedings, and therefore we are not able to comment while these proceedings are ongoing.”
But in a statement, Leigh Day partner Oliver Holland was critical both of Tesco and of Intertek. He said: “The alleged treatment of vulnerable migrant workers in the way they have described to us is totally contrary to the ethical image that Tesco seeks to portray in the UK. A company of this size should be taking steps to ensure that workers producing their products are not mistreated. The garment industry’s reliance on social auditors like Intertek should end now and they should start to take greater responsibility for their supply chains to ensure endemic issues like forced labour are wiped out.”
