Email to Ann McKechin MP submitted by
War on Want
We have become aware that Tesco appeared before
the International Development Committee on March 13th 2007 in
regard to a discussion about Fair trade. In particular you asked
Tesco about their response to the allegations made in a report
by War on Want on garment workers called Fashion Victims.
Labour Committee member Ann McKechin turned
to Tesco, questioning Ms Reynolds about the company's response
to allegations relating to the treatment of employees in some
its suppliers' factories in Bangladesh.
Ms Reynolds stated that Tesco had conducted
an investigation after being made aware of these allegations.
This had involved the employment of independent auditors, she
pointed out, adding that no evidence had been found to support
the claims.
I am writing to inform you that the response
from Tesco is to put it mildly blatantly misleading and is completely
contrary to what Asda (also named in the report) have said to
us in face to face meetings.
Tesco along with the other companies named in
the report (Primark & Asda) were informed that the interviews
with garment workers in the report were done on a confidential
basis to protect the jobs and livelihood of the workers involved.
The key point was that the poor working conditions for garment
workers identified in the report were systemic across the garment
industry hence the interviews being done with 60 workers across
six factories.
Asda were quite happy to meet with us face to
face without being informed of the individual factories. Importantly
they agreed with us the conditions were appalling and then set
out what they were doing to rectify the situation. Tesco despite
being told about the need to protect the confidentiality of the
workers interviewed insisted on being told which factories were
involved and refused to meet face to face.
Tesco claim they have done independent audits
that give them the all clear. This is a completely disingenuous
claim for Tesco to make considering we didn't disclose which factories
we had targeted and they had refused to meet with us to discuss
our findings.
A more significant point as our report highlights
is that there are fundamental flaws with the way that garment
factories are audited according to garment workers. This is because
the factory managers are warned in advance about audits and workers
are coached as to how they should respond. This is why we made
the point about the need to support trade unions on the ground
to give the women workers a strong and united voice to challenge
factory owners.
For us the failure of these voluntary ethical
codes of practice and the flaws with the audit process highlight
the need for the government to support legislation to allow workers
oversees exploited by UK companies and their suppliers to be able
to seek redress in UK courts.
I am not sure what opportunity we have to challenge
the claims made by Tesco but I would appreciate being given the
opportunity to do so.
March 2007
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