Report: Seamstresses harassed

Levi’s, Wrangler, Lee agree to bring in outside oversight.

Women sewing blue jeans for Levi’s, Wrangler, Lee and The Children’s Place faced sexual harassment and gender-based violence and some were coerced into having sex with supervisors to keep their jobs in African factories, labor rights groups say.

In response to the revelations, the brands agreed to bring in outside oversight and enforcement for more than 10,000 workers at five Lesotho factories, according to a report from the Washington-based Worker Rights Consortium released Thursday.

The labor rights group investigated Taiwan-based Nien Hsing Textile factories in Lesotho — a poor, mountainous kingdom encircled by South Africa — after hearing from a number of sources that women who sew, sand, wash and add rivets to blue jeans and other clothes were facing gender-based violence.

Managers and supervisors forced many female workers into sexual relationships in exchange for job security or promotions, the report says. In dozens of interviews, the women described a pattern of abuse and harassment, including inappropriate touching, sexual demands and crude comments.

When the workers objected, they faced discrimination and retaliation, the report says. The factory managers also fought union organizing, it says.

While most of the employees are from Lesotho, managers were both locals and foreign. And female workers told investigators even male colleagues were molesting them.

“Male workers like touching females in a way that is not appropriate,” one worker said.

“The foreign national managers slap women’s buttocks and touch their breasts. They sometimes take them home for sex,” another worker said.

Their testimony in the report is anonymous to protect their privacy.

Levi Strauss & Co. vice president of sustainability Michael Kobori said as soon as the company received the Worker Rights Consortium report it told Nien Hsing “that this would not be tolerated and required them to develop a corrective action plan.”