Retail group Tesco and Intertek a quality and safety audit body face action over the alleged treatment of workers at a jeans factory in Thailand after complaints from workers who made jeans and denim jackets at a factory.
A case against retail group Tesco and testing and certification body Intertek could go before courts in England if these organizations fail to settle workers’ claims for compensation.
As a first step in legal proceedings, Leigh Day, a UK legal firm representing 130 Asian garment workers, sent a ‘letter before action’, to the two UK-based multinational companies in December. Based on workers complaints Leigh Day has asked Tesco and Intertek to settle their claims for compensation failing which the workers will consider progressing the matter in the High Court in England.
This would probably be the first time UK-based companies would face litigation in the English courts over the treatment of workers in an overseas garment factory owned by third-party suppliers. Intertek and Tesco have both said they are not involved.
According to the workers they were dismissed from the garment factory in 2020 after confronting managers about the conditions there. After failing to get justice from Thai courts they are now asking for compensation from Tesco too because they allege the retail group was negligent in allowing a third-party supplier to treat them badly and because Tesco gained financial benefit from the work they did in making jeans and jackets.
Tesco sold its business in the Asian country to Bangkok-based conglomerate CP Group in November 2020. It was Tesco Thailand that placed orders with VKG and the retail group has stated that garments the factory made for it only went on sale locally at stores run by its business in Thailand. The Tesco Group has also said it had no role in the day-to-day running of the site.
Leigh Day, however, asserts that Tesco management in the UK must have known that F&F denim garments were coming into the group’s supply chain from VKG between 2017 and 2020. The legal firm also asserts that Intertek “consistently conducted audits at the VKG factory between 2017 and 2020 and did not accurately identify or report what was happening there”.
While working at VKG between 2017 and 2020, the 130 migrant workers were paid at most £4 a day, worked seven days a week, and became “trapped in a cycle of forced labor and debt bondage”. Under Thai law at the time, these workers should have been paid a minimum of £7 for eight hours’ work, plus £1.34 per hour overtime. But overtime pay was rarely forthcoming, the legal firm alleges.
Accusations in Leigh Day’s legal case are that Tesco and Ek-Chai displayed negligence by permitting, facilitating, or failing to prevent the unlawful working and housing conditions which caused injuries and losses for the workers.
Thai garment workers files complaint against Tesco
