Workers for some suppliers of Chinese fast fashion giant Shein are still working 75 hours a week, despite the company promising to improve conditions, a report suggests.
A new investigation by Swiss advocacy group Public Eye has followed up on its 2021 report, which found a number of staff across six sites in Guangzhou were doing excessive overtime.
According to the group, who interviewed 13 employees from six factories in China supplying Shein for its latest investigation, excessive overtime was still common for many workers.
But not why our clothes are so “cheap”. If you have never checked AliBaba, you just can’t understand what kind of price points we are talking about. Printed T-shirts for $0.39. Hot pots for $3.70. USB hubs with HDMI out for $2.90. The list goes on and on.
A $10 T-shirt, 25x more than wholesale, could go up to $10.80 and you would hardly notice, but that would mean the worker could be paid three times as much for making it. Instead, the worker gets paid nothing, the manufacturer gets paid peanuts, and whoever is reselling them to us takes in 90% of the profit.