Study: D-minus grade for Glassons in workers’ rights

  • Breaking
  • 21/04/2015

A new report has taken aim at the fashion industry over the exploitation of factory workers, and a New Zealand retailer has been caught in the firing line.

The Australian Fashion Report was compiled by Baptist World Aid, a Christian organisation aiming to combat poverty, and follows an earlier study released in the wake of the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh where more than 1000 people died.

The study aims to shed light how the clothes we wear are produced and how the workers making them are treated. It looked at the companies' policies, levels of traceability and transparency, monitoring and training, and workers' rights.

One of the authors, Gershon Nimbalker, says New Zealand fashion giant Glassons has been given a total rating of D-minus.

"For Glassons to get one of the lowest grades, one thing that we could find for them was that they had a code of conduct that looked at some of the essential things that we want a code of conduct to looks at," says Mr Nimbalker. "[But] we want to know more information than that, how are they implementing that code of conduct making sure workers were being protected."

Glassons didn't respond to the survey questions, but publically available information was used by the study to assess the company.

RadioLIVE / 3 News

source: newshub archive