H&M has been blamed for neglecting to pay the garment workers who supply its high-street stores a reasonable “living wage”. That is why, to get survival most of the workers are bound to doing extra working hours. Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) has claimed.
Face to face conversation with more then 62 workers in six H&M Supplier factories from India, Cambodia, Bulgaria and Turkey, they expressed the wages they are earning that are not enough even for covering basic needs for their families.
The CCC said Sweden’s H&M, which is the world’s second-largest fashion retailer after Zara owner Inditex, had failed to meet a commitment it made in 2013 to ensure its suppliers would pay a living wage to around 850,000 textile workers by 2018.
“H&M needs to take action immediately to stop the scandal of poverty wages and workers’ rights violations,” said the CCC’s Bettina Musiolek.
But H&M said it had reached at least 600 factories and 930,000 garment workers with its fair living wage strategy.
The company, which has more than 4,800 stores in 69 nations, also said it did not share the CCC’s view of how to create change in the textile industry.
“There is no universally agreed level for living wages, and wage levels should be defined and set by parties on the labour market through fair negotiations between employers and workers representatives, not by Western brands,” a H&M spokeswoman said.
