Global popular fashion chain Zara has been accused of having sweatshop-like conditions at some of the factories in South American it subcontracts from.
The Brazilian Ministry of Labor is investigating the Spain-based brand due to the discovery of a contractor in São Paulo employing predominantly Bolivian immigrants working under unsafe conditions. According to the parent company of Zara, Inditex, the workers were confirmed to be illegally hired by a subcontractor called AHA, and the company has expressed its policy of “zero tolerance” of such breaches.
According to The Guardian, Renato Bignami, who led the task force that exposed the sweatshop operations, claimed that the workers resided on the premises and undertook over 12-hour shifts in unhygienic and poor working conditions.
“They work 16 or even 18 hours a day,” he said. “It is extremely exhausting work, from Monday to Saturday, sometimes even Sunday depending on demand. I’ve seen workers who have taken home 150–250 reals (US$93–154) at the end of the month—after paying off housing debt, food debt, telephone card debt, debt [to people traffickers] for the journey here.”
Bignami attributed the challenging economic environment to be a key factor for the migrant workers from Bolivia, Paraguay, and other areas. The low-paid migrants accept the meager wages because of the high exchange rate when converting from the Brazilian real to their home currency. One Brazilian real equals 0.625 U.S. dollars.
“These are classic cases of immigrant sweatshops,” Bignami said, adding that he had no doubt that such labor conditions characterized modern-day slavery. Workers often face “threats, coercion, physical violence. All this to increase productivity,” he added.
Inditex, the world’s largest clothing retailer, said that there were 15 people who had been working for the subcontractor AHA without their knowledge and denied responsibility for “unauthorized outsourcing.”
“[AHA] has accepted full responsibility and is paying financial compensation to the workers as required by Brazilian law and the Inditex Code of Conduct,” said a statement from Inditex.
Inditex also confirmed that improvements would be made by the supplier to the subcontractor’s working conditions so that standards would improve and that the factories would be subject to audit and review by company inspectors. Inditex has around 50 suppliers in Brazil, which in total employ 7,000 workers.
The company said it wanted to “foster the best conditions possible in the Brazilian textile industry.”
However, the Brazilian authorities found Inditex and Zara to be partially responsible. “AHA is a logistical extension of its main client, Zara Brasil,” said the prosecutor, Giuliana Cassiano Orlandi, to The Guardian. “The company is responsible for its employees. Its raison d’être is making clothes and it follows that it must know who is producing its garments.”
Earlier this year, hundreds of workers in a Cambodian textile factory fainted due to extreme heat, long working hours, and chemical exposure. H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB, Marks & Spencer Group Plc, and Inditex, as well as their suppliers, were all implicated in that case.
The Zara fashion empire is a family-owned business established by Amancio Ortega in 1975 in La Coruña, in northwest Spain. Ortega is considered Spain’s wealthiest man and ranked seventh in terms of global wealth. Zara has over 1,500 stores worldwide in more than 70 countries. Half of the company’s production is based in Spain, about a quarter in the rest of Europe, and a quarter in Asia, Africa, and other parts of the world, according to The Journal of Textile and Apparel, Technology and Management.
