It was inevitable after Shein’s performance before the UK Parliament’s Business and Trade Committee earlier this month. The BBC conducted an investigation into working conditions at some of Shein’s suppliers:
“The BBC spent several days here: we visited 10 factories, spoke to four owners and more than 20 workers. We also spent time at labour markets and textile suppliers.”
We need to level-set a bit here, though: the BBC’s sample numerically is probably not representative of Shein’s supply chain. I don’t know how many suppliers they have, but their General Counsel said the company “carried out close to 4,000 audits” of suppliers, although she didn’t specify the timeframe. My guess is the number is in high hundreds, if not the thousands. You typically don’t want to generalize based on such a small sample; however, looking at the findings through the lens of what is known more broadly about manufacturing in China, extrapolating from that small sample may be appropriate.
Having said that, the BBC
“… found that the beating heart of this empire is a workforce sitting behind sewing machines for around 75 hours a week in contravention of Chinese labour laws… The average working week should not exceed 44 hours, according to Chinese labour laws, which also state that employers should ensure workers have at least one rest day a week.”
ESG/sustainability leaders, staff and advisors – In my previous blog on Shein, I recommended that you “come up with a plan for ensuring your legal team understands fundamentals of your company’s ESG/sustainability program.” The most obvious reason for this preparation is to avoid public embarrassment and criticism by pubic officials (a la Shein’s General Counsel). But there is a corollary to this – if company representatives do make a spectacle with regard to social/human rights matters, that is sure to trigger an investigation by media or an NGO. The bigger the faux pas, the more viral the spectacle will go and the more certain an investigation will follow.
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Image Credit: Koshiro – stock.adobe.com
