They are subjected to murder, rape and sexual harassment
Female workers in luxury fashion factories are paying a heavy price
The parents of the victim, Gyasri Kathiravl, from the source
Efforts to make the workplace safer for female workers in fashion factories.
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The murder of an Indian girl working in an export-ready garment factory has exposed the violence faced by women working in garment factories that supply products to UK fashion companies.
Gyasri Kathiravel has always dreamed of a better life than working in garment factories in Dindegol, a remote part of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.
Despite her meager wages - the equivalent of around £80 a month - Catheravel realized she was fortunate to land a job at Nachi Garment, a local factory that exports clothes for the famous British company H&M and other brands. Globalism.
fixed salary
Like many women in her community, a job in the factory provided a steady salary for her family, yet she wanted more income, which is why the 20-year-old attended evening school in preparation for sitting for her civil service exams, despite her long shifts in the factory.
Catheravel did not leave the factory before the end of her shift.
But on January 1, 2021, she did not return home as usual after the end of her work.
Her family tried to search for her, but to no avail. Four days later, farmers found her decomposing body a few miles from her village.
The authorities arrested her supervisor, who was dubbed by the Indian media, in Thangadurai, for her murder, to the surprise of few of her close colleagues, perhaps because they knew he was the culprit.
Thangadurai was sent to prison awaiting trial.
Months before Kathiravl's death, her family and colleagues reported that Thangadurai had been sexually harassing her, but she felt powerless to report it, or to stop Thangadurai alone.
"She told me this man was harassing her, but she didn't know what to do because she was afraid of losing her job," says her mother, Muthwakshmi Kathiravel.
She continues, "She was a good girl, she was the best among all of us, she always helped me and supported the family, and she wanted to develop her life."
Factory workers interviewed by the Guardian in the weeks after the girl's murder say Thangadurai was known to have sexually harassed female workers in the factory, but he remains unpunished.
“We all knew what he was doing to Catheravel, but no one in the administration cared about it, and if she complained she was afraid she would lose her job, or men from the factory would visit her family and say she was a troublemaker,” says a woman who worked alongside Catheravel.
A year later, the Kathiravel family is still deeply grieving.
At their home, Kathiravl's face is smiling from a picture hanging on the wall, and her family says they can't fill the void she has left behind.
Yet they now believe her death was not in vain. In the weeks following her murder, dozens of other women working in the factory alleged harassment and assault, and their allegations resulted in a chain of events that could change the lives of the 3,000 women working in the factory, and provide a blueprint for how International fashion brands are halting the epidemic of sexual violence in their ready-to-wear supply chains.
"The sexual harassment that women face in the garment industry is directly related to their attempt to keep their jobs at any cost," says the president of the Tamil Nadu Textile and Joint Action Federation, Thevia Rakini.
Investigation
Although the factory denied allegations of harassment, the Workers' Rights Union, a global organization that investigates labor abuse, launched an independent investigation into the Nachi factory.
In a detailed report, investigators say that multiple interviews with the workers and the gathering of evidence from more than 60 workers led the investigation committee to conclude that Catheravel was not the first garment worker to be murdered at the Nachi factory.
Investigators say they are confident at least two other workers were killed, along with Kathiravel, while working in Nachi between 2019 and 2021.
discreet
The Labor Rights Federation says it is "virtually certain" that a bus driver who was a contractor with the company and a factory recruiter were involved in the murder of a worker after they had a sexual relationship with the girl while they were working at the factory.
The report claims that there is a "high probability" that a migrant worker was killed on the factory floor by an unknown perpetrator and her body dumped in a truck container.
The report also says that several Nachi employees, including an eyewitness, testified that the killing took place on the plant's property, after which managers asked workers to keep the incident secret.
The Workers' Rights Union said investigators had found no concrete evidence to hold the factory management directly responsible for the alleged killings, or for Kathiravl's death.
However, the report says, the multiple murders of female Natchi factory employees by men working for the factory in supervisory or semi-supervisory roles cannot be separated from the environment of gender-based violence and harassment that factory management allowed to unfold.
Miscellaneous harassment
Workers' Rights Union investigators have concluded that over the past decade, women working in the factory have been subjected to "widespread" physical sexual harassment, verbal sexual harassment, nonverbal sexual harassment, and sexual coercion, with male supervisors through coercive means forcing female workplace workers to stay. sexual relations with them.
Female workers told investigators that male supervisors used to bully and humiliate them publicly for not meeting production targets, and were subjected to constant verbal abuse and sexual slurs.
Inquisitors also revealed that factory management tolerated an environment of caste discrimination, in which lower- and upper-caste Dalit workers were discriminated against by employees.
Eastman Exports, which owns the Natchi garment factory, says it "questions the accuracy of the data in the Labor Rights Union report" and denies that the killing of a migrant worker took place in the Natchi building.
• Impunity
In Tamil Nadu, the women's union is investigating another 29 cases in which women died unnaturally while working in garment factories, which supply UK brand companies.
In many cases, the union says, women have been murdered by their male colleagues, following alleged rapes and sexual harassment campaigns.
International coordinator of the Asia Floral Wedge Alliance, Ananya Bhattacharjee, says her organization has cataloged many cases of egregious gender-based violence in clothing facilities across Asia.
"Over the years, and across clothing-producing countries, we have witnessed and documented women workers being subjected to verbal and physical harassment, assault, threats of reprisal and denied basic rights for opposing sexual harassment."
Interviews by Asia Flor Wedge Alliance researchers with female clothing workers in 2021 paint a harrowing picture of the scale of sexual violence faced by women who make clothes, and the impunity of perpetrators.
• A binding agreement to ensure the safety of workers
Last month, ground-breaking legally binding agreements were signed between Eastman Exports and a local labor union of women-led garment workers representing the women of the Natchi factory, as well as two international labor rights groups, Asia Flour Wedge Alliance, and the International Workers' Rights Forum.
Among other provisions, the agreement will reform the factory's internal complaints measures, select members of the women's trade union to be on the factory floor to ensure the safety of women at work, and implement a zero-tolerance approach to verbal and physical harassment and abuse.
If the agreement is implemented correctly, the union says the Nachi factory could become one of the safest places for women to work in Tamil Nadu, an area known for dangerous working conditions for women.
However, labor rights groups investigating the Nachi case say the abuses that have been uncovered should not be considered an isolated incident.
It should be taken as an indication of how the sexual violence that has become an integral part of the production of ready-to-wear is exacerbated.
• The sexual harassment women face in the garment industry is directly related to their attempt to keep their jobs at any cost.
• The multiple murders of female employees of the Nachi factory by men working for the factory in supervisory or semi-supervisory roles cannot be separated from the environment of gender-based violence and harassment that the factory management allowed its spread.
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