Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump's clothing-maker

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Workers endured long hours, low pay at Chinese factory used by Ivanka Trump’s clothing-maker


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People look at merchandise for sale at the Ivanka Trump store in Trump Tower in New York on Dec. 11, 2016. (Bryan R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)
By Drew Harwell April 25 at 3:29 PM

Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday. The factory’s 80 workers knit clothes for the contractor, G-III Apparel Group, which has held the exclusive license to make the Ivanka Trump brand’s $158 dresses, $79 blouses and other clothes since 2012. The company also makes clothes for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other brands.Trump has no leadership role in G-III, and the report did not give the factory’s name or location, or say whether it was working on Ivanka-brand products at the time of the inspection.

Inspectors with the Fair Labor Association, an industry monitoring group whose members include Apple and Nike, found two dozen violations of international labor standards during a two-day tour of the factory in October, saying in a report that workers faced daunting hours, high turnover, and pay near or below China’s minimum wage.The inspection offers a rare look at the working conditions of the global manufacturing machine that helped make Trump’s fashion brand a multimillion-dollar business.
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Chinese factories are by far the dominant suppliers for Ivanka clothes, though G-III also works with manufacturers across Vietnam, Bangladesh and South America. G-III factories overseas have shipped more than 110 tons of Ivanka-brand blouses, skirts, dresses and other garments to the United States since October, shipping data shows. The clothing line licensed by President Trump’s private business is also almost entirely made in foreign factories. Trump last week signed an executive order that he said would push the government to “aggressively promote and use American-made goods and to ensure that American labor is hired to do the job.”

Workers at the G-III factory in China were required to work 57 hours a week “on a regular basis” to hit production targets, inspectors found. Though Chinese law sets the limit for overtime at 36 hours per month, workers in all of the factory’s departments exceeded that limit, working up to 82 hours of overtime a month between September 2015 and August 2016.
The factory’s workers made between 1,879 and 2,088 yuan a month, or roughly $255 to $283, which would be below minimum wage in some parts of China. The average manufacturing employee in urban China made twice as much money as the factory’s workers, or roughly 4,280 yuan a month, according to national data from 2014. Fewer than a third of the factory’s workers were offered legally mandated coverage under China’s “social insurance” benefits, including a pension and medical, maternity, unemployment and work-related injury insurance, inspectors found. The factory also did not contribute, as legally required, to a fund designed to help workers afford housing, inspectors said.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/workers-endured-long-hours-low-pay-at-chinese-factory-used-by-ivanka-trumps-clothing-maker/2017/04/25/b6fe6608-2924-11e7-b605-33413c691853_story.html?utm_term=.055f26b738b7

Workers earned five days of leave a year, though a small fraction of experienced employees were eligible for more. The factory did not have a union, inspectors said, and the workers’ lone representative was a factory appointee.