Victoria’s Secret agrees to finance $8.3 million settlement for laid-off Thai workers
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BANGKOK, May 27 (Reuters) – Thai employees who have been sacked last year from a factory supplying world wide lingerie makes like Victoria’s Secret will acquire $8.3 million, in what labour activists say is the major settlement of its kind in the global garment sector.
About 1,200 staff were being laid off with out severance pay and wages owed to them by Excellent Alliance Thai Global Co Ltd (BAT) soon after it went bankrupt and shut down its factory in Samut Prakan province in March 2021.
The incident was just one of “hundreds of instances of wage theft” that labour activists say took location in the garment marketplace in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. The settlement, financed by Victoria’s Secret in a financial loan arrangement with BAT’s operator, could set a precedent for global brand names to far better defend the legal rights of personnel in their offer chains, in accordance to Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Employee Rights Consortium, an worldwide labour advocacy group.
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“World makes will need to realise that they are not passive traders, but pattern-setters in location labour standards,” reported David Welsh, the Thailand director for the Solidarity Heart, a U.S.-centered personnel rights’ advocacy group.
Far more than a year after BAT and its Hong Kong-based mostly owner Clover Group refused to fork out the laid-off Thai employees, Victoria’s Secret & Co (VSCO.N)said this 7 days in an emailed assertion. It will prolong a personal loan to the proprietors of Clover to finance the settlement.
It was unclear how a great deal of the settlement Victoria’s Secret would go over, expressing in the statement that BAT’s owner were not “in a placement to conclude this make any difference on their possess” so the firm “agreed to advance the severance money to factory entrepreneurs,” with out revealing the volume.
A Thai labour ministry document viewed by Reuters showed the overall payment to the staff which include associated expenditures was in a full of 285.2 million baht ($8.36 million).
Clover had at first explained the personnel ought to agree to wait 10 a long time to be paid in full.
Emily Lau, an government of Clover and a board member of the bankrupt BAT said on Friday the payment will be created with “the personalized methods of owners, Angie and Emily Lau” but did not mention the financial loan from Victoria’s Top secret.
($1 = 34.1500 baht)
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Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat Enhancing by Kanupriya and Nick Zieminski
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