Amazon has been accused of “turning a blind eye” to modern slavery by failing to prevent companies from using its website to sell clothes allegedly made by abused workers.
An investigation by the campaign group Labour Behind the Label found that T-shirts, dresses and denim skirts – all sold on Amazon by independent British firms – were made by Pakistani workers who are regularly ordered to work seven days a week, for up to 13 hours a day.
In three factories, workers were paid below the local minimum wage and risked missing out on healthcare provision.
The clothes were then sold on Amazon by the UK-based brands A2Z 4 Kids, Chums and Icecoolfashion. None of them responded to the allegations.
Amazon said it takes the claims “incredibly seriously” and has launched an investigation. The internet retailer said that sellers must abide by laws and by its own standards, including fair working conditions.
The online giant – which is valued at $2.37trn – runs the biggest marketplace platform in the world, with 62 per cent of all its sales now being made by third parties.
But it has been criticised for appearing to duck its responsibility to guard against “forced labour” under this business model, with little scrutiny of how products are being made for its estimated 500,000 third-party fashion sellers.
These items, sold on Amazon by A2Z 4 Kids, were made in one of the accused factories (Screenshot: Labour Behind the Label)Another of the factories produced this dress, sold by Chums (Screenshot: Labour Behind the Label) Icecoolfashion sold this skirt on Amazon, made by another of the Pakistani firms (Screenshot: Labour Behind the Label)Labour Behind the Label, which exposes the abuse of garment workers, uncovered what it called “shocking” cases of “hidden exploitation” through months of interviews, data analysis and research on the ground. It has shared its findings exclusively with The i Paper.
The organisation said that Amazon was “distancing itself from the goods sold on the site, and by consequence also distancing itself from the conditions under which those goods are sold”.
“There is a high likelihood that due to the opaque yet myriad links between production locations and Amazon sales, many hundreds of thousands of human rights issues are failing to be recorded and escalated,” said the activists.
Lord Alton, a leading crossbench peer, said he believed the workers involved are trapped in “virtual slave labour.”
Human rights experts have demanded action from the company, while calling for more transparency in the fashion industry as a whole and stronger protections in UK law.
Workers reveal tough lives on illegally low pay
None of the three factories in Pakistan investigated by Labour Behind the Label appeared to be paying the local minimum wage of roughly £100 per month for semi-skilled machinists.
Researchers interviewed 40 workers after verifying their employment, including 10 at each of the three locations they have focused on.
Labourers were obliged to work on their days off and stay for several hours of overtime each evening, without being paid double as Pakistani law requires, they said.
Workers at all three locations told researchers they were not provided with payslips and many did not have contracts, depriving them of access to pensions and healthcare entitlements. This also makes it harder for them to take any legal action over their illegally low pay.
The products they were making included a children’s crop top and leggings priced at £12.99 and a pack of three nightdresses for £44.50.
Inside one of the factories in Pakistan where clothes sold on Amazon were made (Photos: Labour Behind the Label)One worker in Faisalabad, who earns £86 a month, admitted he was struggling to support an extended family of seven, including his two children.
“We can only afford the cheapest possible food,” he said. “No milk, meat, fruits, salad.
“We avoid socialising and joining wedding events even in the family because we cannot afford clothing for the purpose. I seldom take my children to recreational facilities.”
A machinist in Karachi said: “In my house I have only three lightbulbs and two fans – nothing more.” He added that he “cannot afford to provide proper education” for his three children.
The i Paper contacted a manager at one of the factories accused of forced labour, who denied the allegations. He said: “We will face the authorities, we will fight, and we will prove that we are innocent.”
The other two manufacturers did not respond.
The British firms under the spotlight
Icecoolfashion: Based in Hertfordshire and valued at £50,000, this company sourced clothes from a factory in Karachi. It recently had 179 products for sale on Amazon, including a denim skirt priced at £29.99, but also runs its own website. A2Z 4 Kids: Located in Warrington, Cheshire, it sells children’s clothing, costumes and accessories. It received more than 1,000 shipments from a factory in Faisalabad between May 2023 and April 2024, and had 306 products for sale on Amazon this year. A2Z 4 Kids, worth £2.6m, mainly sells through marketplaces but also operates a website of its own. Chums: Registered in Merseyside, it had 119 items for sale on Amazon at the latest count, and orders products from a factory in Karachi. The company, valued at nearly £10m, has more than 100 UK employees and recorded a turnover of almost £40m in 2023. Chums has a catalogue business, as well as selling on its own website and via other platforms. It is not known how many of the three UK firms’ products on Amazon were sourced from the accused factories, nor which other brands were supplied by the manufacturers. None of the three British brands responded to repeated requests for comment from The i Paper and Labour Behind the Label. One of the workers shared images of their modest bedroom and basic cooking area (Photos: Labour Behind the Label)The three factories all supply British retailers, which sell their products on Amazon as well as through other websites.
Anyone owning a registered company can become an Amazon seller by supplying basic identification and contact details, a credit card and a bank account.
Many famous high-street brands and stores now use this service. But it’s also an easy way for thousands of smaller retailers – which may lack the ability to check production lines in small factories overseas – to quickly access vast numbers of potential buyers.
Amazon charges all third-party sellers either 75p per item sold or £25 per month, depending on their client plan. Businesses selling clothes must also pay a referral fee of 8 per cent on orders totalling up to £15, with a minimum rate of 25p per item, or 15 per cent for bigger orders.
These arrangements are highly profitable for Amazon, especially because 82 per cent of sellers also pay Amazon to handle their orders for them – including warehousing, packaging, delivery and customer service – according to the business data firm JungleScout.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who held an opulent wedding in Venice with Lauren Sánchez last month, is worth $236bn (Photo: Marco Bertorello/AFP)Amazon’s terms require sellers to agree that no items will be “manufactured, in whole or in part, by child labour or by convict or forced labour”. They must also pledge to abide by all local laws on “working conditions, wages, hours” and Amazon provides an online compliance hub to guide sellers.
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If it suspects standards are not being met, the company can request evidence of due diligence and ultimately remove products from sale.
However, Labour Behind the Label argues that because sellers are not required to disclose their supply chains, let alone provide any proof of routine audits or their results, Amazon is unlikely to detect grounds for suspicion in the first place.
“It is not enough to say that sellers are bound by a contract if no one is able to investigate or hold sellers to account for their supply chain relationships,” said the group’s policy lead, Anna Bryher. “Despite Amazon’s public commitments to ethical practices, the platform’s actual requirements for sellers fall far short of international human rights standards.”
Amazon fulfilment centres, such as this one in Dartford, still handle many items sold on its website by third parties (Photo: Jason Alden / Bloomberg via Getty)Calls for urgent action
Lord Alton, who chairs Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights, said that the investigation revealed how the fashion industry “trades on the broken backs of virtual slave labour.”
He added: “Marketplace websites, like Amazon, need to become more active in insisting that companies whose products they sell take greater responsibility in sourcing their products… We must insist on no more turning a blind eye.”
He called for the UK’s Modern Slavery Act to be strengthened, with goods being labelled with consumer warnings when they are produced in countries “credibly accused of using slave and child labour”.
Sian Lea of Anti-Slavery International, the world’s oldest human-rights organisation, said the investigation “indicates that no one is taking responsibility for ensuring that goods being sold on Amazon aren’t products of exploitation”.
Lea called for the UK to “urgently” introduce import bans on products that are made using forced labour, similar to protections that already exist in the US.
The factories under investigation are located in Karachi, left, and Faisalabad, right (Photos: Getty)Amazon underlined that third-party sellers are independent businesses that are required to follow all applicable laws and regulations, as well as Amazon policies on working hours, wages and benefits. These prohibit “involuntary or forced labour, human trafficking, and modern slavery.”
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It pointed out that the three British sellers under the spotlight also use some of the other leading online marketplace platforms to sell their goods.
An Amazon spokesperson said: “Providing safe, healthy and fair working conditions is a requirement of doing business with Amazon in every country where we operate.
“Selling partners who list products in our stores must comply with our Supply Chain Standards, even when they exceed the requirements of applicable law.
“We take these allegations incredibly seriously and will not hesitate to take decisive action if required. We are currently investigating these claims.”
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