'Girl Power' T-Shirt Company's Manufacturer Fires 100 Impoverished Workers for Protesting Low Wages
Latest
A new report from the Guardian found that a manufacturer for F=, a UK company that advertises itself to be “all about inspiring and empowering girls,” has fired 100 workers for protesting their low wages. Ironically, the company sells £28 t-shirts printed with the words “GIRL POWER” on them, and offers £10 of each sale to Worldreader, a nonprofit that provides people in the developing world free access to digital books. “In one case,” reports The Guardian, “a female employee was beaten on the orders of the management and threatened with murder.”
The shirts are made in a factory owned by Bangladeshi firm Dird Composite Textiles, where some workers made 42p (roughly $0.56) an hour. At the same time, a new minimum wage in the area was raised to 8,000 taka (£71.34, or about $94.42) a month—half of what protestors demanded. Nabeel Ud Daulah, group managing director for Dird, said the workers were not fired, but resigned, “because they were not satisfied with the new wage structure that was announced by the Bangladesh government” and that “all workers that resigned have either received their due financial entitlements or have been contacted to collect their due entitlements.” The Guardian reports that upon reaching out to F=, the company stopped production on the shirts “until the situation is resolved.”