7p an hour Primark workers ‘shame’
03 April 2009
INTERVIEW/PICTURE OPPORTUNITYNEWS HOOK
Saturday, 4 April 2009
Anti-sweatshop campaigners demonstrate outside flagship Primark store on the eve of its second anniversary
WHEN? 2.30 pm BST, Saturday 4 April 2009
WHERE? Primark flagship store, 499-517 Oxford Street, London W1K 7DA
WHAT? Leading developing charity War on Want joins campaign group No Sweat as models weighted in chains stage a sweatshop fashion show outside the store
Chained models slave labour protest
The flagship store of Britain's most popular cheap fashion retailer Primark tomorrow faces a demonstration by chained models over its workers earning as little as 7p an hour for up to 80-hour weeks.
The models will stage a sweatshop fashion show outside the Oxford Street shop on the eve of its second anniversary.
This store sold one million items in its first ten days of trading and continues to flourish despite the recession.
And the retailer's profits jumped 17 per cent to £233 million during the 12 months ending in September.
Leading development charity War on Want will join campaign group No Sweat to spotlight the scandal that Bangladeshi employees making Primark clothes are worse off than two years ago when the store opened.
The latest War on Want report showed employees in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka on the minimum wage, £13.97 (1663 taka) a month, and all of them earning far less than a living wage.
It cited average workers' pay as £19.16 (2280 taka) a month, less than half a living wage.
This contrasted with the retailer's 17 per cent profits jump to £233 million during the 12 months ending in September.
Employees calculated they need £44.82 (5333 taka) a month to give their family nutritious food, clean water, shelter, clothes, education, health care and transport.
Yet amid food and fuel inflation, employees' living standards have fallen since War on Want interviewed them two years earlier.
And on Monday the UN warned that two million children in Bangladesh suffered from acute malnutrition due to food price hikes.
War on Want spokesman Paul Collins said: "Primark's flagship store is thriving with clothes at rock bottom prices while workers producing them face deeper poverty. Gordon Brown's claim that the G20 summit deal will tackle global poverty ignores the reality that UK companies such as Primark are trapping people overseas in dire hardship. Unless he regulates British firms, growing numbers of the poor will pay a terrible price for the world economic crisis."
NOTE TO EDITORS
The War on Want report can be downloaded here
CONTACT: Paul Collins, War on Want media office (+44) (0)20 7549 0584 or (+44) (0)7983 550728
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