According to the Observer workers at the Viva Global factory in Gurgaon, who said they produced clothing for the M&S Girls' Limited range had, until recently, been required to stay for up to 16 hours a day.
One worker, Subhash, 35, said they could not feed their children on their 5,000 rupees [£69] a month basic wage. Pappu, 28, and Rajesh, 32, said they had worked from 9am to 10pm for a basic 4,600 rupees a month, with overtime paid at single rate. "We need to work for the money and if we don't the company will kick us out," said Bitthu, 26.
He was speaking during his lunch break a few blocks away from Viva Global's shabby, unmarked three-storey building in Gurgaon. "If we complain to the management, they are ignoring us, nobody is paying attention. If the workers says they don't want to work, then the management says you have another option, you can leave the company."
"We don't want to work but are working because of our family expenses," said Mohan Singh, 25, a father of two children, who also works in Viva Global's factory producing items for M&S. "If we don't work our salary will be stopped, but the rent of the house and the children's school fees won't stop."
Over recent years M&S has run a highly publicised campaign to reassure customers that ethics are at the heart of their business. A few months ago they publicly committed to ensuring all its workers in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka receive a ‘fair living wage’ by 2015. M&S says it has yet to see evidence to support the wage claims (made by Viva Global workers).
At the House of Pearl factory, producing for NEXT and GAP, workers reported working up to 150 hours of overtime on top of their eight hour a day shifts. One worker Segar, 20, told the Observer he had worked every day in June, putting in 150 hours of overtime: "I like the work but don't like the excessive overtime. But we are told if you don't want to work overtime you don't work here."
Gap, which uses the same factory as Next, confirmed it had found wage violations and gave its supplier a deadline of midnight last night to repay workers who lost out.
House of Pearl chairman Deepak Seth apologised and described recent trading conditions as a "nightmare". He said that a combination of demand for workers for projects related to the Commonwealth Games, which will be held in October, and the annual return of workers to their home villages for the wedding season, had left the factories 40% short of their normal number of workers and they had responded by increasing overtime beyond the maximum two hours per day allowed by law.
Sudhir Kumar Makhija, chief operating officer for Viva Global, said the company was committed to ethical trading. he also claimed that some workers may want to harm the company by making unsubstantiated allegations. However he did acknowledge that workers had complaints and said the company had hired an experienced HR manager "to address workers' grievances".
The extracts and information above was taken from an Observer article "Gap, Next and M&S in new sweatshop scandal" written by Gethin Chamberlain and printed on the 8th August 2010. The full article can be viewed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/gap-next-marks-spencer-sweatshops and a comment by Lucy Seigle can be viewed at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/fashion-sweatshops-lucy-siegle-comment
