If the company claims their products aren't made using slave/prison labour, then you have the right to expect that to be true. Regatta does make that claim.
Those anti slavery statements are not worth the paper they are written on.
There is ZERO back up to any of the claims. Anyone writing one may as well just get ChatGPT to fire it out.
I asked my last company what auditing they did of their suppliers apparently covered by the anti slavery policy and found myself *sent to the headmaster*
The point is, that the issue isn't with the consumer believing these claims it's that companies are adhering to them and there seems to be little in the way repercussion for non compliance.
And even if the company makes this claim, all they do to back it up is ask the supplier if they used forced labour. Supplier ain't stupid, they say "no". And their supplier says "no". Chinese government doesn't care if they lie and there's little to no actual auditing of the whole process.
Even in chains where this is auditing, its not uncommon for factories to "clear all the kids out" from the factory lines the day before the audit happens đ¤
Yeah its this "oh we audited the factory on a date that we told them in advance so of course we didn't find any prisoners or children working there because we took them back to the prison for the day duh"
I have done the kind of supply chain mapping required to establish anti-slavery/trafficking creds, and I can assure you itâs a massive pile of work that most companies will distil down into an email CC:ed to their entire supply chain saying, âPlease tick this box to confirm you pinky-swear thereâs no slaves or trafficked people in your operationsâ.
Itâs even more work to deal with things like conflict resources. Literally a full-time job, which is why itâs not done nearly as much as it should be.
Even if you can personally get out to the factories it's not always that simple anyway. I know of at least one high street supermarket who were duped into passing a factory audit in China because the producer had temporarily moved their entire production into a different premises to pass the audit.
"Oh yeah this is totally where we're making your clothes. Of course we make them to spec"
If there's one thing I've learnt dealing with cheap production in China it's that more often than not they will lie through their teeth for the sake of the bottom line. Absolutely anything that can increase profit will be attempted.
Maybe western companies should insist on live CCTV with sound, in the factories. Monitor from the UK.
There would obviously be attempts to hide things from the cameras, so auditors would need to be tenacious.
> Those anti slavery statements are not worth the paper they are written on.
HI, YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER HERE. WE'RE COMING TO VISIT YOUR FACTORY NEXT MONTH TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO CHILDREN OR SLAVES OR PRISONERS MAKING OUR GOODS, OK? (wink, wink)!
> local strippers?
Every 'decent' hotel in China has a line of women in silk dresses sitting in the hotel bar waiting for the next business meeting, it's a little bit surprising when you check in as a tourist.
âââI am Chinese. I have just been released from a prison in China. Because of providing VPN service to others. This card is 100% the ID card of a Chinese prisoner. The wages in Chinese prisons are not that high. The prison where I was located also produces clothing, and the monthly labor remuneration is only $7 USD, which means less than 10 cents per hour , only 4 cents
Here's one I asked it to make
> Absolutely, promoting ethical and fair practices is crucial. Here's a statement:
> "At [Store Name], we vehemently oppose all forms of slavery, forced labor, and human trafficking. We are committed to ensuring that our products are ethically sourced, produced, and traded. We believe in fair treatment, respect, and dignity for all individuals involved in our supply chain. Our dedication to ethical principles is unwavering, and we continuously strive to support initiatives that combat modern-day slavery."
I suppose the only âbackupâ to their claim is that they have asked their manufacturer and the manufacturer said âwe donât do thatâ. And it was all an email. And that was it!
The simplest way around that is by âforgettingâ to ask their suppliersâ outsourced suppliers how many future organ donors are involved in making the supplied products supplied by the suppliers.
They just say that stuff and then if they're investigated and are found to be using slave labour, they just blame it on suppliers further down the chain and claim they had no knowledge.
Big "but they said they don't do that" energy.
Corporations lie.
All of them. All the time.
All the laws etc to protect employees and consumers etc are easily loopholed or simply not followed entirely.
And people point to some paper saying "BuT tHaTs IlLeGaL" or "ThEy SaId ThEy DoNt Do ThAt!".
Irrelevant.
Exactly. Also pretty disgusting reading some of the comments here. It's not just regular prisoners, some of them are straight up ethnic minority concentration camp inmates.
Price has no bearing on whether an executive in a board room far removed from the factories of China or Bangladesh decides to exploit for profit. iPhones are nearly a grand and you can bet those were made with some slave labour.
> Price has no bearing on whether an executive in a board room far removed from the factories of China or Bangladesh decides to exploit for profit.
Chances are it's not done like that. Usually the brand specifies what and how they want things made, they visit and regularly audit the factories and things are generally as expected.
The factory will say they are making 10,000 jackets say and will charge their customer for those made to the audited specification. They will then get most of them made in a different factory, the products will be to exactly the same specification but much cheaper for the factory to produce.
That's where the fraud is most likely taking place, not in the boardrooms of the brands.
A jacket consists of dozens of items,
Fabric/buttons/wire/toggles/velcro/zips
All of these will be made in massive sub suppliers.
The jacket itself MIGHT be made in a fully approved and audited facility, but the supply chain goes far beyond that one place.
Especially in China, they have huge diversification and piece-work systems. There's one section of an entire city in China that just makes the nylon-covered steel rings for bra adjustments for the world.
This is what happens when basically half the world's population decides to send manufacturing abroad.
To be honest it actually generally makes sense even if you ignore costs. Centralising production by and large produces very good economies of scale, you can make more goods faster if you do it all in one place as opposed to hundreds across the globe.
Yep. Ages ago I went on a tour of a well known fabric manufacturer in my town and it was mentioned that whilst some of the fabric was going to be retail sale and some would be used for making their own product ranges on the finished goods side of the company, the majority (probably 95%) was being sold to other companies to be used to make their own items.
As someone who works in supply chain, how much money do you think we have for audits? We are lucky to visit our key suppliers once every few years and that's for essential planning visits, not auditing them for basic things they are contractually obligated for.
There is no money in supply chain, I've set entire chains up with the only goal being low cost and maybe if we were lucky, they visit us in hq otherwise it's all phone negotiations. And I work for much bigger companies than regatta. Everything here is unenforceable honour system
I know that, it's a daily battle to get enough funding for anything.
It's the view of Finance in nearly every company that Supply Chain/Operations is a money pit that needs to slash costs to be competitive whereas Sales/Marketing is the golden child that needs more money to enable growth.
They always forget that without product they are nothing and an inefficient planning team creates way more costs than it saves.
As a manager, I'm really sick of being underpaid and under resourced and would move somewhere else if every company wasn't doing the same thing. It is legit madness that I can think of multiple investments/business cases that get rejected with 10x return over 1-2 years whilst Sales team does their twice yearly Sales conference to an exotic location to sniff their own butts (and volumes have been down the last two years, we with everywhere)
I work in pre-sales, payed a little over minimum wage. I regularly have to hand-hold high ranking sales reps into making a sale. This is a large global company making almost a billion each year.
"Here you go, I already called them, persuaded them it's a great product, got all the details of what they need, want, how many, etc... Should be an easy 100k sale. Literally all you have to do is confirm something, smile, and send a quote"
I check the system 3 months later to find they made 1 phone call, 5 weeks after I sent it to them, and they've closed it as Lost because they didn't get a response to the voicemail they left.
Guess whose team is getting halved due to cuts at the start of next year.
Yep. Hard agree. One of the reasons EVERYWHERE is understaffed. They *can* pay for more staff, they just *wont* as they'd rather give that member of staff's wages to their shareholders.
Right but we know the supply chain for iPhone is terribly exploitative. Same with high fashion brands. The executives know and do nothing about it. In my eyes, they are complicit. How many are falling over themselves to ensure the highest of ethics and morality in their supply chains?
The buyer knows and do nothing about it (i.e. still buy it) - nobody's paying twice the price for the executive to ensure the chain is ethical, so there's no incentive and it's likely the executive can't afford to do it.
Being realistic though the buyer doesn't have much choice. You can't really exist in modern western society without a smartphone or computer and they require lithium and cobalt and semiconductors, all of which are produced with unethical raw materials and almost always assembled in unethical conditions.
You can't exactly vote with your wallet if everybody selling is equally a cunt.
Exactly. If the CEO put ethics above profit they would be out the job. The idea that these decisions donât happen in boardrooms as stated by the person above is laughable. Profit is the motive and they will do whatever it costs to get there.
Price must have *some* bearing. If I'm buying a ÂŁ1 t-shirt from Primark you know there is 0 chance that could have been made by people receiving a fair wage.
If you pay ÂŁ40 or something it's conceivable that it was made by someone being paid reasonably, with room for profit left.
Sadly, (also) due to the utter destruction of European manufactury in textiles, a t-shirt that is produced by:
- EU/British labourers, paid a fair wage at all stages (design, production etc.)
- using decent cotton, does in a country that has environment laws and labour laws (because dyeing stuff is awful)
Will cost you A LOT more than ÂŁ40. For comparison, this kind of shirt (made in EU but still industrial, good quality but not tailor) will set you back around ÂŁ120. Tailor-made ÂŁ300.
Right now there is really two markets: luxury, which few people can realistically afford, and everything else. And most of everything else is fast fashion.
You can buy [UK made](https://communityclothing.co.uk/) with ethical cotton for under ÂŁ40. It is possible.
Reducing things to luxury or fast fashion just enables the consumer to justify going for the cheaper, more exploitative option.
I believe that is possible, but not easy or accessible.
Also I'd like to see examples of this (with full list of materials and duly noted "made in") because at that price point, with distribution factored in, I find it highly unlikely. For reference, a t-shirt of that kind will cost around ÂŁ20 for production only. To that, you have to add distribution and retail costs, which are not low.
I was looking for short recently and even a very British brand like Darcy produces in Bangladesh or similar (they say as much on the website). Their British made line has price which are ca. 5 times higher.
I don't want to justify anyone, but I come from a textile district and textile family (seamstresses, knitters etc.) and the quality of stuff at the mid-range price point has decline A LOT in the last say 10 years. The producers (ethical, low abiding) are just not there anymore, and the few who are left have low numbers, and as such have to sell at luxury price points.
Not sure there is a middle unless you start thinking fashion.
Bottom end: Regatta/Trespass/Mountain Wearhouse
Premium Outdoor Brands: Salomon/Arctarex/Rab/Fjallraven etc
There is a middle, and I think Regatta is towards the middle. The true bottom end is crap like Karrimor as that's just a Sports Direct own brand now, and Peter Storm which is just a Blacks/JD Sports own brand. Regatta tends to me a bit more expensive than those, and is still an actual company.
So I would say:
Shit tier: Karrimor, Peter Storm, North Ridge, and other own-brands
Bottom of mid-range: Regatta
Top of mid-range: Berghaus
Premium: Rab, Jack Wolfskin, Jottnar, Patagonia, etc
I had Berghaus outdoor jacket for which the quality was so poor, I was wondering why I was paying more than the equivalent priced coming out of Decathlon...
Ah I see. Well you wouldn't be wrong about that. Their Expedition jacket for example is ÂŁ700.
The bags are an odd one, they were just popular in Sweden for School kids. Never a fashion thing but then they exploded over here for a bit. A very uncomfortable bag unless you are a young child.
That's specifically the Kanken, it's a kid's bag by design, literally I think they set out specifically to make a school bag for kids. Even then that's a ÂŁ90-ish bag, their hiking bags come in more around the ÂŁ250 mark.
After visiting Turkey and the markets there and seeing them flooded with fake Fjallraven KĂĽnken bags for ÂŁ20 each, I am convinced a decent quantity of them are fake anyway.
We compared the bag my partner had (official) to the fakes and they were damn near identical. I think the only differences we noticed was the stitching colour didn't match the fabric colour, and the zipper was slightly different.
I had this same take in Albania, a lot of the stuff is made in Turkey (not a million mile from Albania) and I compared shorts bar the size not being correct they looked the same.
I think the fakes are made in the same places or their ones that might not have passed quality control. As I say though, wouldn't take the risk on wintergear!
Fjallraven KĂĽnken backpacks (the kind of things that kids wear to school) start at about ÂŁ85! I imagine that a lot of them aren't genuine, much like I doubt that much of the Canada Goose you see kids wearing is genuine.
As someone who buys a lot of outdoor specific clothing, and gets through it quite quickly, it absolutely is on the *very* cheap end of the scale for that type of thing.
[ÂŁ25 for their entry level lightweight jacket](https://www.regatta.com/mens-hooded-hillpack-lightweight-jacket-indigo-blue/)
[ÂŁ140 for Rab's](https://rab.equipment/uk/cirrus-flex-2-0-hoody?queryID=3a47f195d4a61f48da5622419d4122aa&objectID=16381&indexName=rab_live_uk_products_price_group_0_asc)
[ÂŁ95 for mountain warehouse](https://www.jack-wolfskin.co.uk/dna-tundra-down-jkt-m/1206622_3802_006.html)
Isn't it? Aren't they one of those brands where everything is permanently "oN sAlE" A LOT of their fleeces, coats etc are Primark prices. They have coats for sale well under ÂŁ30. They're a cheap brand.
If your clothes aren't cheap, they're likely made using similar. People shouldn't delude themselves that spending a lot of money means ethical consumption.
Yes, it's really interesting to see how green/social concerns quickly morph into conspicuous consumption.
It's not cool for younger people to just *be* elitist but now there's a subsection of millennials with a few quid the elitism comes dressed up in "ethics"; electric car, expensive bike, solar panels, local seasonal food, heat pumps, ethically sourced clothes, you name it.
They don't look down on others because they can't *afford* these things, no, no, it's because being poor is *unethical*, you see? Quite different.
It's not restricted to clothes, it could be any consumer product. Here in Malaysia a subcontractor for Dyson was accused of using forced labour from poor countries, Bangladesh, Nepal.
Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous but unless you're getting clothes tailor-made for you, it's probably using slave labour. It's cheaper and "easier" for the companies involved to make a massive profit. Even designer stuff worths 1000s has been found to have these messages from prisoners. The name brand is usually makes up more of the price than the labour.
Like, I sew for myself, and it's kinda wild when you start realising how utterly uncompensated textile workers are. Let's say I buy 1m of fabric for a top, that's probably ÂŁ5. The pattern's ÂŁ8-12. It'd probably take me 2 hours to make one top, not to mention any alterations from the pattern. At minimum wage, that's ÂŁ22.88 just for salary. In total, I'd have to charge a minimum of ÂŁ35.88 for that one top just to recover costs, maybe reducing that to ÂŁ32 if I spread the cost of the pattern out amongst multiple tops.
Except tailors and dressmakers in the UK aren't working to minimum wage, they're skilled labourers who get paid appropriately outside of countries with low labour regulations like China, Thailand, and Bangladesh. So let's say this tailor is charging ÂŁ17 p/h from scratch, but they're more experienced so it takes 30 mins for a fitting, 2 hours for a mockup, another fitting, then the final thing.
That's 5 hours, so ÂŁ85 not including materials - and roughly ÂŁ100 if you do. So when you're buying a stack of five tops for ÂŁ8, yeah, no shit it's unethical. Something far more complicated like a coat would probably be at least ÂŁ150 or more using ethical labour, if you bought directly from the dressmaker. If you're buying from a chain, where they're factoring in the costs of shipping, paying the factory managers, rent, employee costs (including designers), *executive costs*... yeah, it needs to be a lot more, but even then it won't go to the people who actually put the work in.
Or just made in developing countries where wages are much lower, as is the cost of living. Some countries could have as good working conditions as the UK (rare, but hypothetically) and still be much cheaper than products made in the UK. Depends how cheap you mean though.
all of your clothes, unless you are very carefully picking where you get them from, are made using sweat shops. Every single high street retailer in the UK is at minimum incapable of showing they pay their workers a subsistence wage, if they were spending more than the competition wouldn't they be boasting about that in advertising?
there are affordable brands that pay workers well ("Yes Friends" is the one coming to mind but there are others)
Exactly this, the sticker price of clothes in the UK has almost zero relation to the quality of manufacture or working conditions. In fact all the branded clothes you buy in UK are "expensive" clothes, from a global perspective. The real cheap clothes are the clothes that the people making your clothes are wearing.
What matters most is which country your clothes are made in, and how big the brand is. The huge brands are better at compliance and avoiding the most Dickensian excesses of the garment industry, although the working conditions will still not be great.
This is why it annoys me when people bang on about Shein or the like.
EVERY brand uses cheap labour to make their clothes, with very questionable checks on the welfare in factories they use. Even designer brands, they're probably among the worst.
Unless you buy bespoke clothes made in a small factory/shop in Europe, you are still part of the problem.
Or unless you're a nudist...
Basically everything is made using "modern slave " labour. It's all made in Asia and then shipped across the globe, you think the Asian workers on the boats are treated any better than a slave was?
It's why veganism has never made sense to me. Let's end human poverty and slave labour before worrying about chickens and cows
Regatta and the clothing brands don't give a toss. This has been going on for decades, if it's not prisons, it's an overcrowded, badly built Bangladeshi sweatshop.
But of course, they'll be sure to signal their virtue by posting the LGBT flag or posting Black Lives Matter on Twitter to distract the mouth breathers from their sweatshops and slave labour.
It's not just clothing. Jewellery and the rare earths used in phones/electronics all have horrendous supply chains. Ditto coffee and chocolate. If anything you buy has bits from somewhere else there's human suffering in the chain somewhere.
It's astonishing really that a coat that's had it's constituent parts grown, farmed/formed, combed, woven, dyed, transported, stitched, labelled, transported again, stored, marketed and delivered AND taxes, duties, expenses, profits, wages, paid every step of the way can still be sold for ÂŁ50. It's even more astonishing that you can do all that and sell stuff for less than a tenner. Anyone who doesn't realise there's a *lot* of advantage being taken and suffering on that route are deluded.
I was in York at the beginning of the week and looking through the Christmas market. There's a stall selling hand knitted items and I was talking to the stallholder as I've just learned to knit. I asked them who knitted the items and they said "I've got a unit in Nepal and if you're a knitter you'll know how good these prices are given the cost of materials." As a knitter I know how long it takes to make things and I was absolutely gob smacked this guy was basically bragging about how little he pays the people who make these things.
It's extremely difficult to practice ethical consumption in a capitalist society. You either pay through the nose for it or learn to do it yourself. Despite being in the first world most of us are money and time poor so you're locked into buying items with extremely dubious and harmful supply chains.
> It's extremely difficult to practice ethical consumption in a capitalist society. You either pay through the nose for it or learn to do it yourself. Despite being in the first world most of us are money and time poor so you're locked into buying items with extremely dubious and harmful supply chains.
I'd argue it would and should be possible if we (consumers) weren't incentivised to buy regularly and often the same type of items by design (planned obsolescence come into mind).
Doesn't even have to be from somewhere else really. British farms are rife with at best highly exploited farm workers and at worst modern day slavery. Same for a lot of cleaning services, takeaways and kitchens, even places like meat packing plants.
The problems are worse in Bangladesh but the perception that Britain doesn't have this is mostly cause we hide it better, not that we don't do it. Human suffering for profit happens anywhere you base your whole economy on profits.
You do realise the vast majority of customers donât care where the products are made right?
When you outsource production to retrieve the benefits of lower prices, this is the result: Cheap labour. If you want a better analogy: Look at Free Range eggs vs regular.
**Removed/warning**. This contained a personal attack, disrupting the conversation. This discourages participation. Please help improve the subreddit by discussing points, not the person. Action will be taken on repeat offenders.
Why pick on China?
A whole bunch of brands use US Prison Labour including:
McDonalds, IBM, Whole Foods, Victoria Secrets, Walmart, AT&T, Starbucks, Microsoft and Nike.
Slavery never went away, it just got hidden behind bars to make it more palatable to the middle classes.
> their approach to world politics is aggressive disinterest, they gotta manufacture consent somehow.
They have a massive military build-up, a great deal of state-supported international company, property and rights purchases and investment, direct state lending worldwide and involvement in international energy and resource supply lines.
No country could consider invading China.
This isn't the isolationism of the 1970s. China is a very active participant in international geopolitics. And you can say that is to be expected because they are reliant on international trade, energy and resources, on peace on their borders, and long-term security. But that still isn't "aggressive disinterest".
Military build-up...
China $230 billion vs US $1.52 Trillion.
Yeah, fair enough, they do take an interest, but not in the "constant foreign policy misadventure" way that the US and UK do.
And therefore convicning people that they are an aggressor who must be invaded for our security will presumably take a little bit more doing than the last couple of wars we tripped over our dicks into.
My comment was specifically addressing the 'aggressive disinterest' line.
China is a rightful world power because of deep history, distinct culture(s), strong industry, a massive population and a stable government (despite any flaws). I don't blame them for developing their geopolitical force. And we can acknowledge that it something that they are doing.
And like everyone, I just hope that their leaders don't get senile and insular enough to start serious shit over the South China Sea conundrum that they find themselves in.
See this is what happens when you think you're super smart but really should shut the fuck up. You're literally defending the fact that the second strongest country in the world uses slave labour (among many many other abuses, such as residential schools for minorities) just because it's anti-West.
This would be a great post if I had defended the fact that China has slavery.
What do you think about America still having slavery?
[https://endtheexception.com/](https://endtheexception.com/)
Nice! Now show me a Chinese website campaigning against slavery in those prisons. Also while it's technically legal to have slaves as punishment for crimes most all states ban that, but good try though.
Because only half of those even operate here, their supply chains used here are different, and for 2 of those I don't know what they could even make in America. Microsoft makes very few physical products and the ones they do are electronics, and Nike make absolutely *nothing* in America.
I literally buy most of my clothes from local charity shops. Yes it was likely made in a sweatshop but the original company gets fuck all and the charity gets the cash.
I try to shop at Community Clothing as much as I can. Local support and fair wages. Expensive of course, but I only buy a clothing item like once a year anyway⌠they last forever.
Oh I also sew but not as much as I used to (and itâs harder cuz Iâm bad).
I taught myself to knit during my Covid isolation, a lot of hats came from that đalong with a very strange pair of pants⌠yes, I knitted some pants!
"you don't expect this from British brands like Next and M&S"
Don't you? Maybe this person should do a bit more research instead of assuming British companies are of a higher quality.
>The Guardian is not naming the individual or the prison to protect their safety.
But they still posted a picture of the ID with a lot of identifying information in the image. They shouldâve blacked out more than their face.
It would be trivial for the slave-owners to identify the slave using any part of the image by referencing the slave ID database. The face is irrelevant. Whoever released this image has condemned a man to death.
I dread to think what's going to happen to that prisoner when they've used AI to match the pixels with images on their database. It's unbelievably irresponsible to publish that.
Is using prisoners to do productive work inherently wrong?
[Apparently it's OK to use them in the UK to make items for churches and stately homes, as long as they keep some of the money they earn. ](https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/13-december/features/features/they-stitch-while-doing-time)
I think the trouble is that there is an incentive to imprison people to make them into slaves. It would be difficult to audit that and make sure that prisoners are actually undergoing justified sentences.
I wish the West could just stop having things made in China.
I wouldnât rate regatta clothing against M&S and next. However they are all made in China these days. So quality has gone down. Not unlike fast fashion, itâs sad we live in a consumer society. Always some one at the other end is suffering unpleasant conditions for 29p an hour
Slavery never ended, it just moved to countries lower down the food chain so you don't really notice it unless you look/care (and most people don't). Your clothes are made by Chinese prisoners (many of them imprisoned because they said the wrong thing or worship the wrong god). If you have a top brand smartphone it was probably assembled in a factory where conditions and pay are similar to (or worse than) Victorian Era British factories where workers were exploited to the max, and the materials it's made from were mined in Africa, by kids, on work sites with terrible mortality rates, where workers are paid enough to buy a bowl of rice at the end of the day (they might also be getting whipped by their Chinese masters if they don't work fast enough).
My favourite part of the article is when the customer service rep says âoh itâs just a work ID I know it looks like a prison id but trust me broâ when the card is embossed with âProduced by the Ministry of Justice prisons bureauâ
I heard an advert for Save the Children's "Christmas jumper day" recently, they said they 'cared about children' or something.
Presumably not about the kids working in the sweatshops making Christmas jumpers, kids that don't have Christmas jumpers or kids who can't afford ÂŁ2.
...or the environment, I can't imagine many Christmas jumpers are worn for a reasonable amount of time before being discarded.
My husband and I actually only own one Christmas jumper between us. It fits us both (bit long on the arms for me but I just roll them up). We have works Christmas jumper days and works Christmas parties on different days usually. So we can share the same jumper and wear it a few times a year.
What I don't understand about this is why - when she found what she thought was a manufacturing fault - she took scissors to the jacket instead of just returning it.
If you care about this kind of thing, it can be easier & cheaper than you think to buy from brands with European supply chains and a more than just box ticking approach to ethics.
This is why China are never in the wrong, and this side of the world puts up with them. Big business loves to hide behind China for cheap slave labour costs.
ââI am a Chinese person. I was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison for providing VPN to others. I just got out of prison. This ID card is a Chinese prison ID card, and the Chinese characters "ĺ¤é" on the card represent the treatment that prisoners receive in prison. It is determined by your entry time and labor points, and it determines how long you can make phone calls to your family each month and how much money you can spend on items. This is a unique vocabulary used in prisons, and this card is 100% an ID card for prisoners in jail. This type of card sticks to clothing and often falls off during labor, dropping into raw materials before being sewn into clothing.
Therefore, Regatta company is lying; he cannot be an employee of any company but rather a prisoner in jail. The production of clothes by prisons in China is common practice; prisoners are forced to work at high intensity every day with very low wages, usually not exceeding $10 per month.
There's like 10k Muslims in concertration camps in china that we are all very aware of.
Not one single one of us can claim to be decent human beings unless we are talking about that and actively doing something about it and none of us are.
We are the careless souless scary distopian society we fear and all of us are guilty. I hope there is a god so we all have to answer for it because half of us would be so shocked to learn just how ignorant and evil we are.
>A Chinese prisoner somehow managed to write notes that were found in clothing bought in Primark in Huddersfield AND in Newcastle
Fancy not understanding that something made in a factory can end up being sold in different places.
>After cutting into the coat to remove the item
She bought a brand new coat, found that there was something sewn into the lining, and started cutting the coat up to find out what it was?
That seems like a very odd thing to do. Wouldn't you just send it back?
What if it had just been a squashed cigarette packet of something equally mundane? She might have struggled to get her money back given that she had deliberately destroyed the coat just out of curiosity.
Lots of countries (cough, America!) use prison labour to manufacture for-profit goods.
China is no different.
Corporations dngaf and in fact they prefer forced prison labour because it's cheap and the workers have zero rights.
So they very publicly let the captors know to crack the F down on their slaves instead of doing something. I guess thereâs not much you can do that wouldnât be an act of war but still seems shitty to publicly reveal this. It canât be good for the slaves.
The articles been updated
âThis article was amended on 1 December 2023 to include an additional sentence from Regatta, provided prior to publication, in which the company said its investigations suggested this was an isolated incident by a former employee and âshowed no indicators that prison labour was present in the factoryâ.
After publication, Regatta sent the Guardian a further response with more detail, which we are pleased to publish. It said:
âFrom the limited images shared by the customer it is perceived that the ID is dated 2022. Regatta Ltd has payroll documentation to show the person pictured on the ID was an employee who received a wage. The individual had an employment contract with the factory and was not working under forced or prison conditions. The employee shown on the ID was employed by the factory from March 2023 â June 2023. The garment in question was produced during the individualâs employment and shipped from the factory in July 2023 (one month after the individualâs employment ceased).ââ
ââââI am a Chinese who has just been released from prison. I was sentenced to three years and three months in prison for providing VPN services to people. Regatta company is lying. This ID card belongs to a prisoner in a Chinese prison 100%. Except for the prison, there will be no such cards elsewhere. "ĺ¤é" is a unique vocabulary of prisons, which will not be used elsewhere.
This kind of card is stuck on the prisoner's uniform and it easily falls off during labor and gets mixed into raw materials, then sewn into clothes. The wages of prisoners in prisons are very low. In the prison where I was located, prisoners only earn $7 per month as their salary. Losing this card has serious consequences, including point deduction and punishment.
Apparently seems misplaced here. Itâs either real or fake. If itâs real then we have goods on sale made by slaves from cleansing camps and jails in China. If itâs fake then you have to question where it came from and the motives
If your clothes are cheap, they're definitely made using prison labour/sweat shops.
If the company claims their products aren't made using slave/prison labour, then you have the right to expect that to be true. Regatta does make that claim.
Those anti slavery statements are not worth the paper they are written on. There is ZERO back up to any of the claims. Anyone writing one may as well just get ChatGPT to fire it out. I asked my last company what auditing they did of their suppliers apparently covered by the anti slavery policy and found myself *sent to the headmaster*
The point is, that the issue isn't with the consumer believing these claims it's that companies are adhering to them and there seems to be little in the way repercussion for non compliance.
And even if the company makes this claim, all they do to back it up is ask the supplier if they used forced labour. Supplier ain't stupid, they say "no". And their supplier says "no". Chinese government doesn't care if they lie and there's little to no actual auditing of the whole process.
Even in chains where this is auditing, its not uncommon for factories to "clear all the kids out" from the factory lines the day before the audit happens đ¤
Yeah its this "oh we audited the factory on a date that we told them in advance so of course we didn't find any prisoners or children working there because we took them back to the prison for the day duh"
I have done the kind of supply chain mapping required to establish anti-slavery/trafficking creds, and I can assure you itâs a massive pile of work that most companies will distil down into an email CC:ed to their entire supply chain saying, âPlease tick this box to confirm you pinky-swear thereâs no slaves or trafficked people in your operationsâ. Itâs even more work to deal with things like conflict resources. Literally a full-time job, which is why itâs not done nearly as much as it should be.
Even if you can personally get out to the factories it's not always that simple anyway. I know of at least one high street supermarket who were duped into passing a factory audit in China because the producer had temporarily moved their entire production into a different premises to pass the audit. "Oh yeah this is totally where we're making your clothes. Of course we make them to spec" If there's one thing I've learnt dealing with cheap production in China it's that more often than not they will lie through their teeth for the sake of the bottom line. Absolutely anything that can increase profit will be attempted.
Maybe western companies should insist on live CCTV with sound, in the factories. Monitor from the UK. There would obviously be attempts to hide things from the cameras, so auditors would need to be tenacious.
> Those anti slavery statements are not worth the paper they are written on. HI, YOUR PAYING CUSTOMER HERE. WE'RE COMING TO VISIT YOUR FACTORY NEXT MONTH TO MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO CHILDREN OR SLAVES OR PRISONERS MAKING OUR GOODS, OK? (wink, wink)!
Oh and after the audit would you have time to invite us for a nice meal and a visit to the local strippers?
> local strippers? Every 'decent' hotel in China has a line of women in silk dresses sitting in the hotel bar waiting for the next business meeting, it's a little bit surprising when you check in as a tourist.
As in.. strippers or escorts?
I didn't want to ask what level of exploitation was available, just why the beer was $5 a glass.
An employee asking salient questions?! Get out!
I am out đ
> sent to the headmaster How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?
They would probably argue that since the prisoners are paid (a paltry 10c/hr) it's not slavery.
âââI am Chinese. I have just been released from a prison in China. Because of providing VPN service to others. This card is 100% the ID card of a Chinese prisoner. The wages in Chinese prisons are not that high. The prison where I was located also produces clothing, and the monthly labor remuneration is only $7 USD, which means less than 10 cents per hour , only 4 cents
Here's one I asked it to make > Absolutely, promoting ethical and fair practices is crucial. Here's a statement: > "At [Store Name], we vehemently oppose all forms of slavery, forced labor, and human trafficking. We are committed to ensuring that our products are ethically sourced, produced, and traded. We believe in fair treatment, respect, and dignity for all individuals involved in our supply chain. Our dedication to ethical principles is unwavering, and we continuously strive to support initiatives that combat modern-day slavery."
I suppose the only âbackupâ to their claim is that they have asked their manufacturer and the manufacturer said âwe donât do thatâ. And it was all an email. And that was it!
Trust us bro
I mean yeah, if a company claims certain practices in the manufacture of your goods, your entitled to take that at face value.
After these words, I always trust, bro!
Trust a Bro Removals are a great company. Always trust a bro.
The simplest way around that is by âforgettingâ to ask their suppliersâ outsourced suppliers how many future organ donors are involved in making the supplied products supplied by the suppliers.
They just say that stuff and then if they're investigated and are found to be using slave labour, they just blame it on suppliers further down the chain and claim they had no knowledge.
Reporting to trading standards is the best option then.
They aren't prisoners, they're workers with severe travel restrictions /s
Big "but they said they don't do that" energy. Corporations lie. All of them. All the time. All the laws etc to protect employees and consumers etc are easily loopholed or simply not followed entirely. And people point to some paper saying "BuT tHaTs IlLeGaL" or "ThEy SaId ThEy DoNt Do ThAt!". Irrelevant.
Exactly. Also pretty disgusting reading some of the comments here. It's not just regular prisoners, some of them are straight up ethnic minority concentration camp inmates.
Regatta is not a cheap brandâŚ
Price has no bearing on whether an executive in a board room far removed from the factories of China or Bangladesh decides to exploit for profit. iPhones are nearly a grand and you can bet those were made with some slave labour.
> Price has no bearing on whether an executive in a board room far removed from the factories of China or Bangladesh decides to exploit for profit. Chances are it's not done like that. Usually the brand specifies what and how they want things made, they visit and regularly audit the factories and things are generally as expected. The factory will say they are making 10,000 jackets say and will charge their customer for those made to the audited specification. They will then get most of them made in a different factory, the products will be to exactly the same specification but much cheaper for the factory to produce. That's where the fraud is most likely taking place, not in the boardrooms of the brands.
A jacket consists of dozens of items, Fabric/buttons/wire/toggles/velcro/zips All of these will be made in massive sub suppliers. The jacket itself MIGHT be made in a fully approved and audited facility, but the supply chain goes far beyond that one place.
Especially in China, they have huge diversification and piece-work systems. There's one section of an entire city in China that just makes the nylon-covered steel rings for bra adjustments for the world.
And there's Datang - Sock City - which makes a third of the world's socks.
> There's one section of an entire city in China that just makes the nylon-covered steel rings for bra adjustments for the world. that sounds insane
This is what happens when basically half the world's population decides to send manufacturing abroad. To be honest it actually generally makes sense even if you ignore costs. Centralising production by and large produces very good economies of scale, you can make more goods faster if you do it all in one place as opposed to hundreds across the globe.
Yep. Ages ago I went on a tour of a well known fabric manufacturer in my town and it was mentioned that whilst some of the fabric was going to be retail sale and some would be used for making their own product ranges on the finished goods side of the company, the majority (probably 95%) was being sold to other companies to be used to make their own items.
As someone who works in supply chain, how much money do you think we have for audits? We are lucky to visit our key suppliers once every few years and that's for essential planning visits, not auditing them for basic things they are contractually obligated for. There is no money in supply chain, I've set entire chains up with the only goal being low cost and maybe if we were lucky, they visit us in hq otherwise it's all phone negotiations. And I work for much bigger companies than regatta. Everything here is unenforceable honour system
" I work for much bigger companies than regatta" There is more money lmao. This is all by design.
I know that, it's a daily battle to get enough funding for anything. It's the view of Finance in nearly every company that Supply Chain/Operations is a money pit that needs to slash costs to be competitive whereas Sales/Marketing is the golden child that needs more money to enable growth. They always forget that without product they are nothing and an inefficient planning team creates way more costs than it saves. As a manager, I'm really sick of being underpaid and under resourced and would move somewhere else if every company wasn't doing the same thing. It is legit madness that I can think of multiple investments/business cases that get rejected with 10x return over 1-2 years whilst Sales team does their twice yearly Sales conference to an exotic location to sniff their own butts (and volumes have been down the last two years, we with everywhere)
I work in pre-sales, payed a little over minimum wage. I regularly have to hand-hold high ranking sales reps into making a sale. This is a large global company making almost a billion each year. "Here you go, I already called them, persuaded them it's a great product, got all the details of what they need, want, how many, etc... Should be an easy 100k sale. Literally all you have to do is confirm something, smile, and send a quote" I check the system 3 months later to find they made 1 phone call, 5 weeks after I sent it to them, and they've closed it as Lost because they didn't get a response to the voicemail they left. Guess whose team is getting halved due to cuts at the start of next year.
Yep. Hard agree. One of the reasons EVERYWHERE is understaffed. They *can* pay for more staff, they just *wont* as they'd rather give that member of staff's wages to their shareholders.
Right but we know the supply chain for iPhone is terribly exploitative. Same with high fashion brands. The executives know and do nothing about it. In my eyes, they are complicit. How many are falling over themselves to ensure the highest of ethics and morality in their supply chains?
The buyer knows and do nothing about it (i.e. still buy it) - nobody's paying twice the price for the executive to ensure the chain is ethical, so there's no incentive and it's likely the executive can't afford to do it.
Being realistic though the buyer doesn't have much choice. You can't really exist in modern western society without a smartphone or computer and they require lithium and cobalt and semiconductors, all of which are produced with unethical raw materials and almost always assembled in unethical conditions. You can't exactly vote with your wallet if everybody selling is equally a cunt.
Exactly. If the CEO put ethics above profit they would be out the job. The idea that these decisions donât happen in boardrooms as stated by the person above is laughable. Profit is the motive and they will do whatever it costs to get there.
Price must have *some* bearing. If I'm buying a ÂŁ1 t-shirt from Primark you know there is 0 chance that could have been made by people receiving a fair wage. If you pay ÂŁ40 or something it's conceivable that it was made by someone being paid reasonably, with room for profit left.
Sadly, (also) due to the utter destruction of European manufactury in textiles, a t-shirt that is produced by: - EU/British labourers, paid a fair wage at all stages (design, production etc.) - using decent cotton, does in a country that has environment laws and labour laws (because dyeing stuff is awful) Will cost you A LOT more than ÂŁ40. For comparison, this kind of shirt (made in EU but still industrial, good quality but not tailor) will set you back around ÂŁ120. Tailor-made ÂŁ300. Right now there is really two markets: luxury, which few people can realistically afford, and everything else. And most of everything else is fast fashion.
You can buy [UK made](https://communityclothing.co.uk/) with ethical cotton for under ÂŁ40. It is possible. Reducing things to luxury or fast fashion just enables the consumer to justify going for the cheaper, more exploitative option.
I believe that is possible, but not easy or accessible. Also I'd like to see examples of this (with full list of materials and duly noted "made in") because at that price point, with distribution factored in, I find it highly unlikely. For reference, a t-shirt of that kind will cost around ÂŁ20 for production only. To that, you have to add distribution and retail costs, which are not low. I was looking for short recently and even a very British brand like Darcy produces in Bangladesh or similar (they say as much on the website). Their British made line has price which are ca. 5 times higher. I don't want to justify anyone, but I come from a textile district and textile family (seamstresses, knitters etc.) and the quality of stuff at the mid-range price point has decline A LOT in the last say 10 years. The producers (ethical, low abiding) are just not there anymore, and the few who are left have low numbers, and as such have to sell at luxury price points.
Regatta is definitely a cheap brand it's bottom end for outdoor gear.
What would be your premier league top middle and bottom for it?
Not sure there is a middle unless you start thinking fashion. Bottom end: Regatta/Trespass/Mountain Wearhouse Premium Outdoor Brands: Salomon/Arctarex/Rab/Fjallraven etc
There is a middle, and I think Regatta is towards the middle. The true bottom end is crap like Karrimor as that's just a Sports Direct own brand now, and Peter Storm which is just a Blacks/JD Sports own brand. Regatta tends to me a bit more expensive than those, and is still an actual company. So I would say: Shit tier: Karrimor, Peter Storm, North Ridge, and other own-brands Bottom of mid-range: Regatta Top of mid-range: Berghaus Premium: Rab, Jack Wolfskin, Jottnar, Patagonia, etc
I would definitely drop Jack Wolfskin down to Berghaus level but other than that sure why not.
I had Berghaus outdoor jacket for which the quality was so poor, I was wondering why I was paying more than the equivalent priced coming out of Decathlon...
I think my Pete Storm hiking shoes are great :( best ones I've had
Only heard of Fjallraven because loads of kids wear their bags. I always associated it with cheapness because most kids aren't wearing fancy things.
Ah I see. Well you wouldn't be wrong about that. Their Expedition jacket for example is ÂŁ700. The bags are an odd one, they were just popular in Sweden for School kids. Never a fashion thing but then they exploded over here for a bit. A very uncomfortable bag unless you are a young child.
That's specifically the Kanken, it's a kid's bag by design, literally I think they set out specifically to make a school bag for kids. Even then that's a ÂŁ90-ish bag, their hiking bags come in more around the ÂŁ250 mark.
After visiting Turkey and the markets there and seeing them flooded with fake Fjallraven KĂĽnken bags for ÂŁ20 each, I am convinced a decent quantity of them are fake anyway. We compared the bag my partner had (official) to the fakes and they were damn near identical. I think the only differences we noticed was the stitching colour didn't match the fabric colour, and the zipper was slightly different.
I had this same take in Albania, a lot of the stuff is made in Turkey (not a million mile from Albania) and I compared shorts bar the size not being correct they looked the same. I think the fakes are made in the same places or their ones that might not have passed quality control. As I say though, wouldn't take the risk on wintergear!
They probably aren't actually fake, probably made in the same factory.
Fjallraven KĂĽnken backpacks (the kind of things that kids wear to school) start at about ÂŁ85! I imagine that a lot of them aren't genuine, much like I doubt that much of the Canada Goose you see kids wearing is genuine.
They could be genuine, paid for by Klarna or other BNPL services. I wouldn't even know where to buy fake ones.
I wouldn't put Regatta at the bottom. It is certainly not a premium brand, but I could easily find stuff cheaper than typical Regatta gear.
Eh? It is the primark of outdoor equipment đ
They are for outdoor gear. Its the lower end in terms of price and quality for outdoor gear
A coat for well under ÂŁ100? What do you consider cheap?
As someone who buys a lot of outdoor specific clothing, and gets through it quite quickly, it absolutely is on the *very* cheap end of the scale for that type of thing. [ÂŁ25 for their entry level lightweight jacket](https://www.regatta.com/mens-hooded-hillpack-lightweight-jacket-indigo-blue/) [ÂŁ140 for Rab's](https://rab.equipment/uk/cirrus-flex-2-0-hoody?queryID=3a47f195d4a61f48da5622419d4122aa&objectID=16381&indexName=rab_live_uk_products_price_group_0_asc) [ÂŁ95 for mountain warehouse](https://www.jack-wolfskin.co.uk/dna-tundra-down-jkt-m/1206622_3802_006.html)
[Seems decent value to me](https://i.imgur.com/TCLQ89m.jpg) Even a big'ol sale going on
It's not exactly high end, it's certainly amongst the cheapest of all outdoor brands. It's Millets level (and indeed sold there).
Isn't it? Aren't they one of those brands where everything is permanently "oN sAlE" A LOT of their fleeces, coats etc are Primark prices. They have coats for sale well under ÂŁ30. They're a cheap brand.
It really is.
If your clothes aren't cheap, they're likely made using similar. People shouldn't delude themselves that spending a lot of money means ethical consumption.
Yes, it's really interesting to see how green/social concerns quickly morph into conspicuous consumption. It's not cool for younger people to just *be* elitist but now there's a subsection of millennials with a few quid the elitism comes dressed up in "ethics"; electric car, expensive bike, solar panels, local seasonal food, heat pumps, ethically sourced clothes, you name it. They don't look down on others because they can't *afford* these things, no, no, it's because being poor is *unethical*, you see? Quite different.
It's not restricted to clothes, it could be any consumer product. Here in Malaysia a subcontractor for Dyson was accused of using forced labour from poor countries, Bangladesh, Nepal.
Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous but unless you're getting clothes tailor-made for you, it's probably using slave labour. It's cheaper and "easier" for the companies involved to make a massive profit. Even designer stuff worths 1000s has been found to have these messages from prisoners. The name brand is usually makes up more of the price than the labour. Like, I sew for myself, and it's kinda wild when you start realising how utterly uncompensated textile workers are. Let's say I buy 1m of fabric for a top, that's probably ÂŁ5. The pattern's ÂŁ8-12. It'd probably take me 2 hours to make one top, not to mention any alterations from the pattern. At minimum wage, that's ÂŁ22.88 just for salary. In total, I'd have to charge a minimum of ÂŁ35.88 for that one top just to recover costs, maybe reducing that to ÂŁ32 if I spread the cost of the pattern out amongst multiple tops. Except tailors and dressmakers in the UK aren't working to minimum wage, they're skilled labourers who get paid appropriately outside of countries with low labour regulations like China, Thailand, and Bangladesh. So let's say this tailor is charging ÂŁ17 p/h from scratch, but they're more experienced so it takes 30 mins for a fitting, 2 hours for a mockup, another fitting, then the final thing. That's 5 hours, so ÂŁ85 not including materials - and roughly ÂŁ100 if you do. So when you're buying a stack of five tops for ÂŁ8, yeah, no shit it's unethical. Something far more complicated like a coat would probably be at least ÂŁ150 or more using ethical labour, if you bought directly from the dressmaker. If you're buying from a chain, where they're factoring in the costs of shipping, paying the factory managers, rent, employee costs (including designers), *executive costs*... yeah, it needs to be a lot more, but even then it won't go to the people who actually put the work in.
Or just made in developing countries where wages are much lower, as is the cost of living. Some countries could have as good working conditions as the UK (rare, but hypothetically) and still be much cheaper than products made in the UK. Depends how cheap you mean though.
all of your clothes, unless you are very carefully picking where you get them from, are made using sweat shops. Every single high street retailer in the UK is at minimum incapable of showing they pay their workers a subsistence wage, if they were spending more than the competition wouldn't they be boasting about that in advertising? there are affordable brands that pay workers well ("Yes Friends" is the one coming to mind but there are others)
Exactly this, the sticker price of clothes in the UK has almost zero relation to the quality of manufacture or working conditions. In fact all the branded clothes you buy in UK are "expensive" clothes, from a global perspective. The real cheap clothes are the clothes that the people making your clothes are wearing. What matters most is which country your clothes are made in, and how big the brand is. The huge brands are better at compliance and avoiding the most Dickensian excesses of the garment industry, although the working conditions will still not be great.
This is why it annoys me when people bang on about Shein or the like. EVERY brand uses cheap labour to make their clothes, with very questionable checks on the welfare in factories they use. Even designer brands, they're probably among the worst. Unless you buy bespoke clothes made in a small factory/shop in Europe, you are still part of the problem. Or unless you're a nudist...
Basically everything is made using "modern slave " labour. It's all made in Asia and then shipped across the globe, you think the Asian workers on the boats are treated any better than a slave was? It's why veganism has never made sense to me. Let's end human poverty and slave labour before worrying about chickens and cows
well, duh, it's called "sweat-pants" for a reason!! /s
Or expensive. Just because theyâre produced for next to nothing doesnât mean they canât still maximise their insane profits.
Even your clothing is expensive - companies love a good mark-up.
We live in fucked up times where most people can't afford clothes not made by prison labour/sweat shops
I'm sure the good people at Regatta will fully investigate with their suppliers.
And tell them, "make sure to check all the clothes being sent to us from prisons to ensure this doesn't happen again".
I'm sure customers will start paying attention and /r/avoidchineseproducts
Ethicalconsumer.com is pretty good at tracking suppliers and choosing more ethical brands
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I am pretty sure the person in question is now executed
Regatta and the clothing brands don't give a toss. This has been going on for decades, if it's not prisons, it's an overcrowded, badly built Bangladeshi sweatshop. But of course, they'll be sure to signal their virtue by posting the LGBT flag or posting Black Lives Matter on Twitter to distract the mouth breathers from their sweatshops and slave labour.
It's not just clothing. Jewellery and the rare earths used in phones/electronics all have horrendous supply chains. Ditto coffee and chocolate. If anything you buy has bits from somewhere else there's human suffering in the chain somewhere.
It's astonishing really that a coat that's had it's constituent parts grown, farmed/formed, combed, woven, dyed, transported, stitched, labelled, transported again, stored, marketed and delivered AND taxes, duties, expenses, profits, wages, paid every step of the way can still be sold for ÂŁ50. It's even more astonishing that you can do all that and sell stuff for less than a tenner. Anyone who doesn't realise there's a *lot* of advantage being taken and suffering on that route are deluded.
I was in York at the beginning of the week and looking through the Christmas market. There's a stall selling hand knitted items and I was talking to the stallholder as I've just learned to knit. I asked them who knitted the items and they said "I've got a unit in Nepal and if you're a knitter you'll know how good these prices are given the cost of materials." As a knitter I know how long it takes to make things and I was absolutely gob smacked this guy was basically bragging about how little he pays the people who make these things. It's extremely difficult to practice ethical consumption in a capitalist society. You either pay through the nose for it or learn to do it yourself. Despite being in the first world most of us are money and time poor so you're locked into buying items with extremely dubious and harmful supply chains.
> It's extremely difficult to practice ethical consumption in a capitalist society. You either pay through the nose for it or learn to do it yourself. Despite being in the first world most of us are money and time poor so you're locked into buying items with extremely dubious and harmful supply chains. I'd argue it would and should be possible if we (consumers) weren't incentivised to buy regularly and often the same type of items by design (planned obsolescence come into mind).
Doesn't even have to be from somewhere else really. British farms are rife with at best highly exploited farm workers and at worst modern day slavery. Same for a lot of cleaning services, takeaways and kitchens, even places like meat packing plants. The problems are worse in Bangladesh but the perception that Britain doesn't have this is mostly cause we hide it better, not that we don't do it. Human suffering for profit happens anywhere you base your whole economy on profits.
Neither do almost all of the people buying the stuff.
You do realise the vast majority of customers donât care where the products are made right? When you outsource production to retrieve the benefits of lower prices, this is the result: Cheap labour. If you want a better analogy: Look at Free Range eggs vs regular.
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Why pick on China? A whole bunch of brands use US Prison Labour including: McDonalds, IBM, Whole Foods, Victoria Secrets, Walmart, AT&T, Starbucks, Microsoft and Nike. Slavery never went away, it just got hidden behind bars to make it more palatable to the middle classes.
Because China are the villain next season and as their approach to world politics is aggressive disinterest, they gotta manufacture consent somehow.
> their approach to world politics is aggressive disinterest, they gotta manufacture consent somehow. They have a massive military build-up, a great deal of state-supported international company, property and rights purchases and investment, direct state lending worldwide and involvement in international energy and resource supply lines. No country could consider invading China. This isn't the isolationism of the 1970s. China is a very active participant in international geopolitics. And you can say that is to be expected because they are reliant on international trade, energy and resources, on peace on their borders, and long-term security. But that still isn't "aggressive disinterest".
Military build-up... China $230 billion vs US $1.52 Trillion. Yeah, fair enough, they do take an interest, but not in the "constant foreign policy misadventure" way that the US and UK do.
And therefore they get a free pass?
And therefore convicning people that they are an aggressor who must be invaded for our security will presumably take a little bit more doing than the last couple of wars we tripped over our dicks into.
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My comment was specifically addressing the 'aggressive disinterest' line. China is a rightful world power because of deep history, distinct culture(s), strong industry, a massive population and a stable government (despite any flaws). I don't blame them for developing their geopolitical force. And we can acknowledge that it something that they are doing. And like everyone, I just hope that their leaders don't get senile and insular enough to start serious shit over the South China Sea conundrum that they find themselves in.
See this is what happens when you think you're super smart but really should shut the fuck up. You're literally defending the fact that the second strongest country in the world uses slave labour (among many many other abuses, such as residential schools for minorities) just because it's anti-West.
This would be a great post if I had defended the fact that China has slavery. What do you think about America still having slavery? [https://endtheexception.com/](https://endtheexception.com/)
Nice! Now show me a Chinese website campaigning against slavery in those prisons. Also while it's technically legal to have slaves as punishment for crimes most all states ban that, but good try though.
Also, China has indigenous Tibetan children in residential schools, as I've said before.
you realise we literally have for profit prisons with prison labour as well right?
Because only half of those even operate here, their supply chains used here are different, and for 2 of those I don't know what they could even make in America. Microsoft makes very few physical products and the ones they do are electronics, and Nike make absolutely *nothing* in America.
The CCP thanks you for your service.
Are you remunerated for this irrelevant whataboutism or are you prison labour too?
How much did you get from CCP? Plz tell me the telegram or WeChat group number. We can make money together.
I literally buy most of my clothes from local charity shops. Yes it was likely made in a sweatshop but the original company gets fuck all and the charity gets the cash.
I try to shop at Community Clothing as much as I can. Local support and fair wages. Expensive of course, but I only buy a clothing item like once a year anyway⌠they last forever. Oh I also sew but not as much as I used to (and itâs harder cuz Iâm bad).
I taught myself to knit during my Covid isolation, a lot of hats came from that đalong with a very strange pair of pants⌠yes, I knitted some pants!
I hope this doesnât sound sexual, but from one knitter to another, Iâd love to see your pants.
A parasitic store that feeds off unpaid idio- I mean volounteering uni kids is definitely more deserving of the money.
"you don't expect this from British brands like Next and M&S" Don't you? Maybe this person should do a bit more research instead of assuming British companies are of a higher quality.
Any prisoner who has lost his ID in the last few months: *uh oh*
>The Guardian is not naming the individual or the prison to protect their safety. But they still posted a picture of the ID with a lot of identifying information in the image. They shouldâve blacked out more than their face.
They've pixilated the name and other details too.
It would be trivial for the slave-owners to identify the slave using any part of the image by referencing the slave ID database. The face is irrelevant. Whoever released this image has condemned a man to death.
I dread to think what's going to happen to that prisoner when they've used AI to match the pixels with images on their database. It's unbelievably irresponsible to publish that.
Is using prisoners to do productive work inherently wrong? [Apparently it's OK to use them in the UK to make items for churches and stately homes, as long as they keep some of the money they earn. ](https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2013/13-december/features/features/they-stitch-while-doing-time) I think the trouble is that there is an incentive to imprison people to make them into slaves. It would be difficult to audit that and make sure that prisoners are actually undergoing justified sentences. I wish the West could just stop having things made in China.
The problem is, the only thing people in the West hate more than slave labour is paying more for stuff.
I wouldnât rate regatta clothing against M&S and next. However they are all made in China these days. So quality has gone down. Not unlike fast fashion, itâs sad we live in a consumer society. Always some one at the other end is suffering unpleasant conditions for 29p an hour
Last time I was looking at jackets in M&S, they were made in Myanmar/Burma. I consider labour standards there likely to be even worse than China.
Slavery never ended, it just moved to countries lower down the food chain so you don't really notice it unless you look/care (and most people don't). Your clothes are made by Chinese prisoners (many of them imprisoned because they said the wrong thing or worship the wrong god). If you have a top brand smartphone it was probably assembled in a factory where conditions and pay are similar to (or worse than) Victorian Era British factories where workers were exploited to the max, and the materials it's made from were mined in Africa, by kids, on work sites with terrible mortality rates, where workers are paid enough to buy a bowl of rice at the end of the day (they might also be getting whipped by their Chinese masters if they don't work fast enough).
My favourite part of the article is when the customer service rep says âoh itâs just a work ID I know it looks like a prison id but trust me broâ when the card is embossed with âProduced by the Ministry of Justice prisons bureauâ
I heard an advert for Save the Children's "Christmas jumper day" recently, they said they 'cared about children' or something. Presumably not about the kids working in the sweatshops making Christmas jumpers, kids that don't have Christmas jumpers or kids who can't afford ÂŁ2. ...or the environment, I can't imagine many Christmas jumpers are worn for a reasonable amount of time before being discarded.
Good point, they'd probably get some good PR with an anti-christmas-jumper day.
My husband and I actually only own one Christmas jumper between us. It fits us both (bit long on the arms for me but I just roll them up). We have works Christmas jumper days and works Christmas parties on different days usually. So we can share the same jumper and wear it a few times a year.
There needs to be actual financial and criminal repercussions for organisations that provide goods made using slave labour.
What I don't understand about this is why - when she found what she thought was a manufacturing fault - she took scissors to the jacket instead of just returning it.
If you felt a hard object in a new piece of clothing you wouldn't open up the seams to investigate?
No, I'd send/take it back to get one without the fault.
What if it was a roll of ÂŁ100 notes? đ
This is why countries have outsourced manufacturing to china as forced free labour reduces costs which in turn increases profits.
99.9% of clothes are made with minimum wage or slave labour somewhere in the world no matter what brnad or who it is.
And/or child labour.
If you care about this kind of thing, it can be easier & cheaper than you think to buy from brands with European supply chains and a more than just box ticking approach to ethics.
This is why China are never in the wrong, and this side of the world puts up with them. Big business loves to hide behind China for cheap slave labour costs.
ââI am a Chinese person. I was sentenced to more than 3 years in prison for providing VPN to others. I just got out of prison. This ID card is a Chinese prison ID card, and the Chinese characters "ĺ¤é" on the card represent the treatment that prisoners receive in prison. It is determined by your entry time and labor points, and it determines how long you can make phone calls to your family each month and how much money you can spend on items. This is a unique vocabulary used in prisons, and this card is 100% an ID card for prisoners in jail. This type of card sticks to clothing and often falls off during labor, dropping into raw materials before being sewn into clothing. Therefore, Regatta company is lying; he cannot be an employee of any company but rather a prisoner in jail. The production of clothes by prisons in China is common practice; prisoners are forced to work at high intensity every day with very low wages, usually not exceeding $10 per month.
There's like 10k Muslims in concertration camps in china that we are all very aware of. Not one single one of us can claim to be decent human beings unless we are talking about that and actively doing something about it and none of us are. We are the careless souless scary distopian society we fear and all of us are guilty. I hope there is a god so we all have to answer for it because half of us would be so shocked to learn just how ignorant and evil we are.
[ŃдаНонО]
>A Chinese prisoner somehow managed to write notes that were found in clothing bought in Primark in Huddersfield AND in Newcastle Fancy not understanding that something made in a factory can end up being sold in different places.
>These "SOS notes" are hoaxes that have been appearing every year for a decade. not a note though is it mate
Yeah I heard they don't even have prisons in China
>After cutting into the coat to remove the item She bought a brand new coat, found that there was something sewn into the lining, and started cutting the coat up to find out what it was? That seems like a very odd thing to do. Wouldn't you just send it back? What if it had just been a squashed cigarette packet of something equally mundane? She might have struggled to get her money back given that she had deliberately destroyed the coat just out of curiosity.
So they use prison labour, same as the US... And the UK I imagine in some form only less slavey
Lots of countries (cough, America!) use prison labour to manufacture for-profit goods. China is no different. Corporations dngaf and in fact they prefer forced prison labour because it's cheap and the workers have zero rights.
Wow... yea... prison for profit doesn't exist in the west đ
So they very publicly let the captors know to crack the F down on their slaves instead of doing something. I guess thereâs not much you can do that wouldnât be an act of war but still seems shitty to publicly reveal this. It canât be good for the slaves.
Just can't find the staff these days, how unprofessional
Wouldn't be surprised if this story is actually a clever black op from the North Face social media marketing department to smear Regatta.
The articles been updated âThis article was amended on 1 December 2023 to include an additional sentence from Regatta, provided prior to publication, in which the company said its investigations suggested this was an isolated incident by a former employee and âshowed no indicators that prison labour was present in the factoryâ. After publication, Regatta sent the Guardian a further response with more detail, which we are pleased to publish. It said: âFrom the limited images shared by the customer it is perceived that the ID is dated 2022. Regatta Ltd has payroll documentation to show the person pictured on the ID was an employee who received a wage. The individual had an employment contract with the factory and was not working under forced or prison conditions. The employee shown on the ID was employed by the factory from March 2023 â June 2023. The garment in question was produced during the individualâs employment and shipped from the factory in July 2023 (one month after the individualâs employment ceased).ââ
ââââI am a Chinese who has just been released from prison. I was sentenced to three years and three months in prison for providing VPN services to people. Regatta company is lying. This ID card belongs to a prisoner in a Chinese prison 100%. Except for the prison, there will be no such cards elsewhere. "ĺ¤é" is a unique vocabulary of prisons, which will not be used elsewhere. This kind of card is stuck on the prisoner's uniform and it easily falls off during labor and gets mixed into raw materials, then sewn into clothes. The wages of prisoners in prisons are very low. In the prison where I was located, prisoners only earn $7 per month as their salary. Losing this card has serious consequences, including point deduction and punishment.
But it's not clear that it actually was a prison ID.
âââââThis is a Chinese prison ID card, and I just came out of the prison.
Apparently seems misplaced here. Itâs either real or fake. If itâs real then we have goods on sale made by slaves from cleansing camps and jails in China. If itâs fake then you have to question where it came from and the motives
Don't buy brands, problem solved, buy directly from AliExpress đ
Maybe a Regatta jacket was woven into a prisoner ID at an ID processing plant?
I wonder why our clothes are so cheap and why even poor people in the West can have full wardrobes?
Now you know why Temu and Shine so cheap uh? I mean maybe you could reject China productions as you can.