Exposed: the forced child labour behind the UK high street. Take action now!
30 Oct 2007
A new report shows children in Uzbekistan forced out of school to pick cotton - which ends up in clothes on the UK high street.
A child working in a cotton field in Uzbekistan. Children are taken out of school and pick up to 70 kilos of cotton a day.
EJF
The special report from BBC Two’s Newsnight included footage of police loading hundreds of children onto buses which transported them to the fields. Buses were loaded with mattresses and bedding for the children to sleep on once they were there. One nine year old child who had been at work since eight in the morning told the film maker:
“They have closed the school - that’s why I’m picking cotton.”
Email Arcadia - owner of Topman and Burton - now, and ask them to clean up their act.
The reporter found hoodies made for Topman ‘made in Uzbekistan’ on display at an industry fair, designed to promote Uzbek cotton to international businesses. Asda, Burton and Matalan were all found to be sourcing from factories which use Uzbek cotton.
People & Planet’s Redress Fashion campaign is calling on UK companies to take responsibility for their whole supply chain - from seed to shirt - and guarantee that no forced child labour is used in the production of their garments.
Our main campaign target is the Arcadia Group - which includes both Topman and Burton.
Email Arcadia now and ask them to clean up their act.
In a statement, owner Philip Green explained that the Topman hoodie seen on the programme was only ordered as a trial run, and they had not done any further business with the company. However, the statement failed to show that the Arcadia group was taking responsibility for conditions in their supply chain.
Arcadia’s response
In his statement Sir Philip Green said:
“Our companies buy garments and do not usually have visibility of the source of the raw materials.
We rely on our suppliers to source all raw materials, and to operate according to our detailed Code of Conduct which includes the statement that ‘child labour must not be used’…
We would not be supportive of using cotton in products where the cotton has been picked in the manner you allege.”
What’s wrong with Arcadia’s response?
The claim that Arcadia does not have ‘visibility of the source of the raw materials’ is not an adequate excuse; it is an abdication of responsibility.
Currently retailers do not have to provide consumers with information on where their cotton is grown. Many claim they just don’t know, insisting their supply chains are too complex for them to possibly find out. Yet this is nonsense, according to Continental Clothing., who have decided to boycott Uzbek cotton. They asked their factories to provide paperwork that showed the source of their raw cotton. According to their company spokesman, it took their Turkish supplier “about three days” and their Indian supplier “24 hours”. Just as equally complex food supply chains can be traced ‘from farm to fork’, retailers could do the same with cotton — ‘from seed to shirt’. But perhaps retailers would rather not know - and thus avoid having to take responsibility.
Arcadia’s statement instead passes the responsibility onto their suppliers.
But if the Acadia Group is serious about conditions in its supply chain it must do more than send a code of conduct to its suppliers. Companies need a clear commitment, at the highest level, to ensuring respect for workers’ rights throughout their supply chain. ‘Ethical trade’ must be an integral part of how the business operates, not an ‘add-on’. This must include ensuring they have information about conditions throughout their supply chains, and make this available for independent monitoring so they can be held to account. The Arcadia group has further to go than most - it is the biggest high street retailer not to join the Ethical Trading Initiative - an essential first step if it is serious about improving conditions in its supply chain.
EJF
Email Arcadia now and ask them to clean up their act.
The middle-men
The report also interviewed British based cotton traders Plexus, who said on film that they would probably buy 10-15,000 tonnes of Uzbek cotton in a season. Since Newsnight contacted them, their lawyers have issued a statement saying that “We have been categorically assured by the Uzbekistan Government that the use of child labour by the Uzbekistan Government is prohibited. If evidence is produced to show that this is untrue, we will immediately cease trading in Uzbekistan cotton.”
The Uzbek government continues to insist child labour is outlawed. Yet Newsnight’s report is just the latest in a series of reports, including the Environmental Justice Foundation’s White Gold: The True Cost of cotton,, and the International Crisis Group’s The Curse of Cotton: Central Asia’s Destructive Monoculture,. Other suppressions of human rights in Uzbekistan have also been widely documented. International Development minister Gareth Thomas referred to the situation as a ‘modern slave trade’.
Traders buying cotton from Uzbekistan are supporting a system that suppresses human rights, yet still appear to take the attitude that how cotton is grown is just not their problem. A number of other British companies are also listed as partners of the Uzbek state trading company.
Why not email them and ask about their polices on forced child labour?
Take action!
Email Arcadia - owner of Topman and Burton - now, and ask them to clean up their act.
Watch the BBC Newsnight report into how Uzbek cotton - picked with forced child labour - reaches the UK high street.
Images on this page are courtesy of the Environmental Justice Foundation, whose report White Gold: The True Cost of cotton, uncovers forced child labour, human rights abuses and environmental destruction in Uzbekistan.
