Unpaid workers 'hid secret messages' in Zara clothes in Istanbul

Workers of a factory in Istanbul that produced clothes for Zara, Mango and Next were left unpaid when the factory closed overnight
PA
Alexandra Richards8 November 2017

Unpaid factory workers allegedly left notes for customers to find when they were shopping at a Zara chain.

Shoppers in Istanbul said they had found pleas for help from unpaid workers on tags inside Zara clothes.

Messages were said to have read: “I made this item you are going to buy but I didn’t get paid for it.”

According to the Associated Press, workers from an outsourced manufacturer for Zara and other retailers have been going into the stores and leaving the secret messages inside the clothes.

The notes are a bid to raise awareness of workers who were left underpaid after a Bravo Tekstil factory that made clothes for Inditex, Zara’s parent company shut down overnight.

Workers were left owed three months’ worth of wages and a severance allowance when the factory closed.

A petition online created to raise awareness of their plight already has over 19,000 signatures.

In the petition, workers claim that by July 2016, their boss had refused to pay a “huge proportion” of their wages.

It also said: “Creditors came to our factory and seized all machines and valuables. Meanwhile, our boss disappeared, taking our wages with him. We have yet to receive our wages or any form of severance payment.”

The factory also produced clothes for Next and Mango, the workers are asking that the brands compensate them for their labour.

The petition said: ‘We demand no more than our basic rights! We call on the international community to support our struggle, sign and share to support our campaign!’

This is not the first time Zara has come under fire for its ethics. It has previously been accused of both slave and child labour and exploiting Syrian refugees.

However, last month Intidex, Zara’s parent company said in a press release that it was dedicated to working with the International Labour Organisation (ILO) to improve “labour conditions at all levels of the garment sector value chain”.

The company is currently working with the ILO on its score programme targeted at “improving management systems and working conditions in factories in China and Turkey.”

A spokesperson for Intidex said that the company "has met all of its contractual obligations to Bravo Textil [sic] and is currently working on a proposal with the local IndustriALL affiliate, Mango, and Next to establish a hardship fund for the workers affected by the fraudulent disappearance of the Bravo factory’s owner.

“This hardship fund would cover unpaid wages, notice indemnity, unused vacation, and severance payments of workers that were employed at the time of the sudden shutdown of their factory in July 2016. We are committed to finding a swift solution for all of those impacted.”

The Evening Standard has contacted Next, Mango and Intidex for comment.

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