Reports of illegal working conditions in Leicester factories have been coming to light since 2015 and Labour Behind the Label started to build networks and collaborate with community groups and unions on the ground in Leicester in 2018.

During the COVID pandemic our work came to a head, when we published reports about worker exploitation in Leicester factories, illegal pay, unsafe conditions and poor brand purchasing leading to exploitation. A series of news exposes of Boohoo’s supply chain followed, many of which we worked on in collaboration with journalists.

Activists put up subvertising posters in Manchester near Boohoo’s HQ around Black Friday of that year, and sent postcards and emails. Campaigning around Black Friday 2020 took place online with a subvertising Instagram deluge to call on the brand to act.

This coincided with Labour Behind the Label doing some political work and Boohoo was called to report to a UK Parliamentary committee and asked about publishing their supplier locations. At this hearing they committed to publish within a year. Under media pressure Boohoo initiated an enquiry with Allison Levitt QC who looked into problems in Boohoo’s supply chain and published an independent enquiry. Sir Brian Leveson was also then hired to lead a programme of change based on the enquiry’s findings. In September 2021 Boohoo’s supplier list was finally published ending years of secrecy about its factories.

After hearing from partners in Turkey that workers were dying due to a denim process that makes jeans look worn out, Labour Behind the Label launched the Killer Jeans campaign calling on brands and retailers to ban ‘sandblasting’ used to fade and distress denim. This process is linked to the fatal lung disease called silicosis, caused by excessive dust particles in the lungs leading to infection.

As well as publishing new research about denim, and having activists insert messages into the pockets of jeans in shops, we held a funeral march outside Dolce & Gabbana where we marched a coffin to their store, laid flowers and read out the names of people who had died from silicosis after sandblasting jeans. We worked with journalists on a number of media reports also in national UK newspapers.

This action alongside other international efforts resulted in many high street companies supporting public bans on the process for their products, including Levis, H&M, New Look, M&S and more, and eventually a national ban for all of Turkey was issued by the Turkish government.

For two years a group of Burmese migrant workers were illegally paid less than a dollar an hour, were forced to work unpaid overtime, and had their holiday pay withheld at the Kanlayanee factory in Mae Sot, Thailand. It was a supplier to Tesco, Disney, Starbucks and NBC Universal.

In Sept 2019, the Kanlayanee workers bravely spoke out to a journalist to stop the labour abuses. A few weeks later, the factory suddenly closed after Starbucks cancelled orders, leaving the workers with nothing. The former Kanlayanee workers fought for justice demanding that they receive the money they were legally owed for making products. The workers were blacklisted as a result, leaving them unable to find alternative work.

After we took up the case, Tesco was the first brand to agree to pay and other American companies followed suit after global campaigns pressured them all to contribute to the pot. The success of this wage theft case set a global precedent for other brands to follow in terms of brand accountability in an industry where migrant labour is rife and workers are often more vulnerable to exploitation through lack of access to advice and legal support. We are proud to have supported the workers in this case.