Boohoo was in the news again this week after a hard hitting BBC Panorama investigation titled “Boohoo’s broken promises” showed how the fast fashion retailer was still up to its old tricks.
Undercover filming demonstrated how one of Boohoo’s Leicester-based suppliers – a factory called MM Leicester Clothing Ltd – was effectively forcing their employees to work overtime. The company reported to the BBC that “its normal hours are 08:00 to 18:00 [a ten-hour shift] and it never forces workers to stay late.” But in the BBC documentary this policy is contradicted by secretly filmed footage which showed that when “workers tell managers they need to go home to feed their families. A supervisor later told them: ‘No-one is leaving at eight, or 10, or later.’”
Most significantly the undercover footage obtained at this factory showed that the clothes being made there were labelled as being made in a factory located elsewhere. The name of this factory was Boohoo’s so-called ethical “flagship factory” that had opened for business on Thurmaston Lane in January 2022. And while “Boohoo’s lawyers say Thurmaston Lane only makes 1% of all Boohoo’s garments,” the documentary went on to show that “Hundreds of orders placed with Thurmaston Lane were actually being made by seven factories in Morocco and four in Leicester.”[1]
After earlier undercover investigations, in March 2021 Boohoo had been forced to list all their UK suppliers on their website, and shortly after this I commented: “Considering that Boohoo has now apparently stopped using many of their sweatshop-styled suppliers they are now saying that the following companies [that I listed] are all ethical employers. Whether this is this case remains to be confirmed by independent investigations conducted by trades unions which should have already started by now.”
Such independent investigations however never materialised. Instead, it seems that all Boohoo really committed to doing was to pretending that they might cooperate with trade unionists at some point in the future. Thus, in June 2022 Boohoo stated: “Through the Apparel and General Merchandise Public Private Protocol, the Boohoo Group is also working with a small number of retailers and the Trade Union Congress to facilitate discussion between manufacturers and trade unions.”[2] This turned out to be just a lot of hot air.
University of Leicester researcher Professor Nikolaus Hammer has recently published an academic article dealing with this issue. In his recently published article he pointed out that the “exposé of violations in Boohoo’s Leicester supply chain” — that was published by labour rights NGO Labour Behind the Label in June 2020 — “resulted in intense multi-stakeholder deliberations within the Apparel and General Merchandise Public Private Protocol (AGM PPP).” As he explained: “These debates were very far-reaching as they sketched commitments not only on core labour standards but also on lead firms’ purchasing practices, social audit protocols and, crucially, the binding nature of a Joint Responsibility Initiative.”
But in conclusion it would appear that these discussions mostly represented a propaganda commitment on the part of the corporate brands involved as Hammer concludes: “While such an agreement would be ground-breaking, progress has stalled as the umbrella of the AGM PPP was wound up in Spring 2023 in favour of a looser structure.”
[1] In a generally uncritical article published in the Leicester Mercury (April 13, 2022), one person did voice their discontent. The article stated: “However, during the launch event [at the new Thurmaston Lane factory], one councillor, who did not want to be named, said she was sceptical about whether the factory would ‘truly live up to its claims as a centre of excellence’.”
It is noteworthy that in 2021 Boohoo set up the Garment and Textile Workers Trust. Subsequently, the following year a report that was undertaken on behalf of this Trust determined that more than half of the Leicester garment workers who were involved in their study “say they are paid below the minimum wage and receive no holiday pay”.
[2] Launched in 2019 the Apparel and General Merchandise Public Private Protocol (AGMPPP) was a forum that “brings together retailers, unions, enforcement bodies and the local authority (but not manufacturers) to discuss and progress issues around non-compliance.”
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist 