Shein suppliers violate Chinese labour laws: Public Eye Report

The researchers travelled to Guangzhou, where Shein is headquartered and where its most important suppliers are located. They located 17 of the 1,000 companies who produce for Shein, including numerous informal workshops with no emergency exits and with barred windows that would have fatal implications in the event of a fire, Public Eye said in its recent report.

The employees, who without exception come from the provinces, work without a contract or premium for overtime and do not earn more than 10,000 Yuan (CHF 1,400), even in good months, as per the report.

Similar conditions prevail in Shein’s huge, main warehouse located an hour’s drive from Guangzhou. It employs over 10,000 people and operates 24/7. Twelve hour working days are common practice.

Employees also complain of such ‘Chinese standards’ at the logistics centre in Liège in Belgium, where European returns were processed until recently. The most frequent cause of dismissal there is failure to meet unrealistic performance targets, which must be achieved to earn the wage of €12.63 an hour. Until June, 30,000 returns – including from Switzerland – were repackaged here daily. Since then, packages have likely been making the full journey back to China, the report said.

Public Eye also scrutinised the new fashion empire’s complex corporate structure. It found a great deal of offshore entities to disguise ownership and avoid taxes, which appears to be a common practice in China, too.

“Shein’s business model is set up to control as much of the value chain as possible, while taking on as little responsibility as possible. Through its combination of a cutting-edge online strategy and archaic working hours, the Chinese newcomer is perfecting the fast fashion industry in a particularly insidious manner. In doing so, it is taking the sector’s tradition of shunning responsibility to another level,” said Public Eye.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (KD)