JSE-listed clothing retailers want labour department to shut down sweatshops

Major JSE–listed clothing retailers have rejected the department of employment and labour concerns that they are “unwittingly” supporting “inhumane and sweatshop conditions” in the clothing and textile sector in KwaZulu-Natal, insisting that they adhere to regulations.

It is the responsibility of the department and the National Bargaining Council for the Clothing Manufacturing Industry to regulate and shut down dodgy operations, the National Clothing Retail Federation of South Africa (NCRF) said in reaction to the department’s concerns.

The NCRF represents 10 retailers, including Woolworths, TFG, Mr Price, Pick n Pay Clothing, Truworths and Cotton On, who employ about 120 000 workers.

The labour department’s chief director of provincial operations in KwaZulu-Natal, Edward Khambula, appealed to “major retailing groups — some of whom are JSE Securities-listed — to take an interest in the working conditions of suppliers they do business with”.

He issued the statement after the department’s inspection blitz of clothing manufacturing premises and found people working in sweatshop conditions. He said retailers were  “beneficiaries” of the lawlessness prevalent in the clothing and textile sector.

The three-day blitz was undertaken with the department of home affairs, Mandeni metro police, the police and the textile sector bargaining council in the iLembe district municipality. 

Khambula warned of a growing trend where companies claim to be trading as cooperatives that they say are not bound by labour laws. He said this was incorrect.

“There is no immunity. We need to fight this practice of a change in the names of establishments. People close down their operations and pop up elsewhere. It is becoming a case of the same faces, same premises and same operations with these cooperatives,” Khambula said.

The department’s chief inspector, Milly Ruiters, said the exploitation, particularly of women, was deplorable and cooperatives in the sector had become another form of fronting. Preliminary inspection reports show widespread disregard and non-compliance with labour laws.

According to the reports, workers are paid below the national minimum wage of R25.42 an hour. There is also a high propensity for hiring undocumented foreigners and non-adherence to occupational health and safety rules.

They reported non-compliance with the Unemployment Insurance Fund and the Compensation for Occupational Injuries and Diseases Act, as well as overcrowding, a lack of training, high noise levels and unhygienic conditions.

Khambula said earlier efforts to raise the labour law violations with employers had not been successful. “We need to organise a seminar wherein we deal with matters of concern happening in the clothing and textile sector. We are aware that the periodic inspections are a frustrating exercise.”

The department said the national bargaining council had reported the problem as involving a high level of deliberate and systemic non-compliance in KwaZulu-Natal.

Michael Lawrence, the NCRF executive director, said retailers welcomed the department’s call for a seminar with executives and other industry stakeholders

But, he added, “The primary task of resolving those issues rests with the department of labour and the bargaining council … when they define those problems they describe a systemic failure of their own capacity and willingness to address the problems as their ultimate responsibility.

“We as NCRF members take the conditions of workers very seriously. We expect our suppliers to supply us with bargaining council compliance audits, and there are many other social audits that exist to ensure responsible sourcing is adhered to by retailers.”

He said the industry also checked the audited certificates and excluded non-compliant businesses from the supply chain “but if people want to be illegal and dishonest then even the architecture of compliance can be defied. Our primary function is to sell to the public. Our primary business is not monitoring, enforcement, compliance and shutting down entities.”

Lawrence added that in the Retail–Clothing Textile Footwear Leather Master Plan 2030, retailers intend to increase their local content sourcing “to way over 60% but this has to be done in the context of the fair treatment of all in the supply chain, not least those in the manufacturing sector”.

The industry was working very closely with the bargaining council to ensure transparency and fair trade, he said. “We do our very best to ensure the most responsible forms of sourcing happens but some entities are able to manoeuvre and manipulate the system — how does that come back to rest at our door as a blame exercise?”

Sweatshops and worker abuse in the sector’s supply chain are a national and a global problem, Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers Union national collective bargaining officer Fachmy Abrahams said. He singled out KwaZulu-Natal as the worst affected province, where workers from neighbouring countries such as Lesotho and Eswatini, often in the country illegally, were exploited, working long hours for little pay.

“It is a very difficult and intransigent problem to fix. There are extreme forms of abuse, and some of it is happening outside the ambit of normal labour law where the employers have converted the business model to a cooperative and listed the workers as owners of the business in an attempt to avoid labour laws,” Abrahams said.

“But what happens is workers don’t have any autonomy over their remuneration, hiring and firing and decisions about contracts and working hours, and workers are abused and we have seen all manners of what looks like human trafficking.”

He cited four workers who had died in July in a fire in a factory in Newcastle.  and they were locked in the factory, it was a Saturday. It is a mad phenomenon, what they have started doing in places like Newcastle. They have moved away from local labour, and are using people from Eswatini and Lesotho. They put in shipping containers or Wendy houses in the back, or they sleep on the floor near the (sewing) machine or on bunks above that they construct.”

He said the employees allegedly worked between 10 and 16 hour days, seven days a week for as little as R120 to R200 a week.

Intermediaries — known as “design houses” — that sourced clothing from manufacturers to supply retailers were exploiting the system, Abrahams said.

“We have tried to change the law to move these businesses back into the formal sector but there is no one policing the cooperatives at the moment,” he added.