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Preface
What Gap Says Is Not What Old Navy Does By Charles Kernaghan Director, Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights In fact, Gap and Old Navy appear to have no idea what is going on at the Next Collections Limited factory — part of the massive Ha-Meem Group in Bangladesh — where their garments are being sewn. And this despite the fact that Gap and Old Navy appear to account for 70 percent of total production at the factory! If Gap/Old Navy have deployed “corporate monitors” to audit working conditions, hours and wages at the Next Collections factory, we urge Gap to release its audit reports. We can, however, inform Gap and Old Navy that the 3,750 workers at the Next Collections Limited factory in Ashulia are routinely forced to work over 100 hours a week, while being shortchanged of their legal wages — which are already well below subsistence levels. Gap is in violation of its own code of conduct and these abuses have been going on for more than two and a half years. The giant Ha-Meem Group, with its 26 factories, including Next Collections, and well over 30,000 garment workers, is in serious violation of Bangladesh’s labor laws and the International Labour Organization’s internationally recognized worker rights standards. Across the giant Ha-Meem Group of garment factories, workers are being routinely cheated of approximately
15 percent of their legal overtime wages. In this report, we provide documentation to confirm these serious violations. We hope that Mr. Stefan Larsson, Global President of Old Navy, will meet with the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, in Bangladesh, at his earliest convenience. Young women sewing Old Navy children’s clothing have been arbitrarily fired and denied their paid maternity leave, while also being shortchanged of their outstanding legal benefits. A young woman just 20 years of age recently lost her baby in her seventh month of pregnancy due to being forced to work over 100 hours a week. She was working on Old Navy jeans. It does not have to be this way. I believe that if we can work together in good faith, both Gap and the Bangladeshi workers will be better off. For over two decades, the powerful Ha-Meem Group of factories has actively blocked the garment workers’ right to organize an independent union. We hope that Gap/Old Navy agrees that Bangladeshi garment workers — among the hardest working yet poorest workers in the world — should have their legal rights respected.
Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights