Indian Textile Mills Accused Of Forced Labour

Five textile mills in the Tamil Nadu area of India - linked indirectly to several high-profile high-street retailers including H&M, Primark and C&A - have been accused of forced labour in a report entitled "Flawed Fabrics".

The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) and the India Committee of the Netherlands (ICN) are responsible for the report, which was compiled "through a mixture of desk research and interviews on the ground with workers employed at five Tamil Nadu spinning mills". It concludes "that several core labour rights are being violated. Girls and young women are being lured from their home villages by false promises and are working under appalling conditions amounting to forced labour" - a practice known as the Sumangali Scheme.

The mills in question are Best Cotton Mills; Jeyavishnu Spintex, the knitwear manufacturer named KM Knitwear; Premier Mills, part of The Premier Group; Sulochana Cotton Spinning Mills, a part of The Sulochana Group; and Super Spinning Mills, part of the Sara Elgi Group, reports WWD.

In most cases the mills are used by the retailers' suppliers who order yarn, meaning that there is no direct link, however many companies that are associated with the mills have announced that they plan to take action immediately.

H&M have announced it is to "blacklist" Super Spinning Mills, saying that "as this third-tier spinning mill is unwilling to cooperate with H&M in a transparent way and since we have come so far in our transparency work, we see no other option... this will mean that H&M requires that our suppliers do not order yarn from this spinning mill for H&M orders".

Workers Protest Over Conditions

Primark said that it will work with Jeyavishnu Spintex to implement the "Fair Hiring, Fair Labour" programme that it has established with Verité, an international NGO and member of the Alliance to End Slavery and Trafficking. Meanwhile C&A, who is linked to Best Cotton, said that "Sumangali is completely unacceptable and could result in the termination of a relationship should we find that the system exists in our suppliers' operations," although noted that "it will not be possible to abolish the system" unless it has the support of its local partners.

The report comes as there is increasing pressure on all companies sourcing fabrics and clothing from the region to enforce safe and fair working conditions for the workers involved following several disasters, including the collapse of  Bangladesh´s Rana Plaza in April 2013, which killed more than 1,130 people.