Demand to shut down sweatshops
People are allegedly working up to 16 hours a day, for R120 a week, in overcrowded and unhygienic conditions, with high noise levels
Major Jse–listed clothing retailers have rejected the department of employment and labour’s 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, which employ about 120000 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 Securitieslisted — 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 manufacturing premises found people working in sweatshop conditions.
Khambula said retailers were “beneficiaries” of the lawlessness prevalent in the clothing and textile sector.
The three-day probe was undertaken with the department of home affairs, Mandeni metro police, the South African Police Service and the textile sector bargaining council in the ilembe district municipality.
Khambula warned of a growing trend where companies claim to be trading as co-operatives, which 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 co-operatives.”
The department’s chief inspector, Milly Ruiters, said the exploitation, particularly of women, was deplorable and co-operatives in the sector had become a form of fronting.
Preliminary inspection reports showed widespread disregard and non-compliance with labour laws.
They found 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 where we deal with matters of concern in the clothing and textile sector. We are aware 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’S 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,” Lawrence said.
The industry also checked 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 according to 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 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 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 co-operative 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 manner 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] machines or on bunks above.”
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.