Activists to question Boohoo on living wage for Leicester garment workers
Boohoo will be challenged by campaigners over paying “very low” prices to suppliers and a lack of compensation for underpaid workers at UK factories making its clothing.
Workers in factories in Leicester that supply Boohoo could be owed as much as £125m in underpaid wages as some of the retailer’s suppliers previously paid workers below the minimum wage, activists from Labour Behind the Label and ShareAction have estimated.
At Boohoo’s annual shareholder meeting on Friday, campaigners will ask whether Boohoo will ensure workers are paid back in full “for the underpayment of the minimum wage that has been the basis of much of its margin for a number of years”.
Campaigners will also seek clarification on what the Manchester-based firm is doing to “make sure that its prices will enable the payment of a living wage to workers in the UK, and are enough to allow suppliers to operate legally, turn a profit and invest in their factories in order to create a sustainable industry”.
Boohoo, which this week revealed an 8% fall in revenues in the three months to May, will hold its annual shareholder meeting at a new showcase factory in Leicester to highlight efforts to reform its UK supply chain. In 2020, evidence of poor practice emerged after an investigation by an undercover reporter.
The meeting comes after a new survey revealed that poor working conditions persist in Leicester’s garment factories almost two years on.
More than half of the garment workers involved in the study, conducted by theUniversity of Nottingham’s Rights Lab and De Montfort University, said they were paid below the minimum wage and received no holiday pay.
A Boohoo group spokesperson said:“We strongly reject any inference that people in our supply chain are paid
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