27 September 1999, Sunday Times
Production in Eastern Europe
Top shops use Europe's 'gulag' labour

00-02-17, CCC letter to levi's concerning eastern Europe.

Paul Nuki and David Leppard in London, Gareth Walsh in Latvia, John Phillips

BRITISH high street retailers are using factories in eastern Europe where female workers are humiliated with strip-searches and others where employees are paid so little they scavenge for food.

Marks & Spencer, C&A, Debenhams and Laura Ashley are among companies using factories where workers are fainting at their machines or developing chronic health conditions they cannot afford to treat.

In a Bulgarian factory making Levi Strauss clothing for sale in British stores, more than 100 female textile workers are being forced to strip naked by their bosses at the end of their shifts - ostensibly to check they have not stolen anything.

In an extensive four-week investigation, undercover re-porters located and visited eight textile factories which produce goods for British stores in Latvia, Bulgaria and Romania - countries which Western buyers privately refer to as "gulag Europe". Wages of 20p an hour are so low in some of the decrepit former communist-bloc textile plants that labourers are forced to live in slums without running water or modern sanitation.

Rosa Ruzkhova flushed with anger as she recalled the fear and indignity of being stripped naked at the end of a gruelling 12-hour shift in a factory in Bulgaria which makes T-shirts and other casual wear for Levi Strauss. "Women are stripped naked every day at the end of their shifts," said the 39-year-old seamstress from Sandanski, a run-down spa town in the shadow of the Pirin mountains in southwestern Bulgaria. "They said it was to stop theft but we were not allowed to keep our underwear on."

Ruzkhova, who worked for 38p an hour in the Greek-owned Darios factory, was sacked after refusing to be strip-searched - what she describes as the management's demands for "sexual entertainment". For many of the 150 women still toiling at the firm's new plant outside Sandanski the daily humiliation goes on.

Factories such as Darios, where hourly pay rates are on a par with factories in Asia, have proved popular with big Western clothing manufacturers seeking to cut transportation costs. In addition to Levi Strauss, companies including adidas, Puma and Nike source goods from the region - although conditions at these factories are not known.

Valeri Tushtev, chief factory inspector for the region, said: "They are not only stripped in some factories, but beaten if they do not do as the bosses ask. We alert the police, but they do nothing."

Mark Elliott, a spokesman at Levi Strauss's European headquarters in Brussels, confirmed yesterday that it was using Darios and said a full investigation would be launched.

At a factory in Ogre, Latvia, conditions are also harsh. There 2,800 workers - mostly women - produce fabric and garments for companies including Marks & Spencer, Pringle and Laura Ashley.

Many staff in the Soviet-era factory work 12-hour shifts, seven days a week. Union officials say 10% of the workforce are paid 30p an hour and some are so poor that they have to scavenge for food in local woods.

Work-related medical problems are proliferating. Signe Kaktina, a doctor at the town's health centre, said: "The main health problem is caused by dust from the wool, resulting in asthma and bronchitis. In Soviet times the factory had its own free clinic with doctors, but this no longer exists."

Emilya Zashcherinska, 41, lives in a dingy two-room flat with her boyfriend and 12-year-old son. She is the family's only wage-earner because her boyfriend is undergoing a three-month training course in the dye section at the factory, for which, she said, he is not being paid.

"I used to work in the spinning section, but developed problems with my hands because of the work," she said. "Now I clean at the factory, earning 60 lats a month (about Pounds 62). I have an extra 20 lats for my disease, because it was caused by the machines there."

A factory spokesman said last week that pay and conditions conformed to Latvian legislation and working agreements. Marks & Spencer, Laura Ashley and Pringle all confirmed they sourced goods from Ogre but said they were unaware of poor conditions there. "Our inspectors felt it was clean and spacious," said an M&S spokesman.

In the Latvian town of Jelgava, 30 miles away, Paul Levine, a British businessman, runs a sweatshop producing goods for companies including C&A, Debenhams and Richards. Levine, who has been fined for failing to give his workers proper contracts, described Latvia to an undercover reporter last week as "a piss-hole". He wandered the factory flanked by a large, muscular dog.

Baiba Bucina, a local doctor, said conditions in the factory were so bad this summer that one woman a week had to be resuscitated after fainting at her machine. Others suffer from a spinal disability caused by poor nutrition and long hours spent hunched over sewing machines. "The job never used to be so hard," said Bucina.

Levine, through his British lawyers, said last week that all the allegations made about his company were "completely false". None of the factories visited by The Sunday Times in Bulgaria and Latvia paid all their workers a wage high enough to feed and house a family comfortably. In Romania, conditions were even worse.

In the small town of Hirlau, at the end of a potholed road littered with dead dogs and wrecked vehicles, 900 women are producing clothes for British stores, including C&A. Some are paid 20p an hour. Daniela Stavarache, 31, a quality controller from the Dovatex garment factory, lives in a hovel with her husband Florian, 37, who has been suffering from hepatitis for six years. She works between 48 and 60 hours over a six-day week, but cannot afford medical treatment.

Stavarache, who remains grateful to the factory for work, says her children Anna Maria, 10, and Andrei, 7, do not get enough to eat and are poorly clothed. They have no running water in their home and all four sleep in one room.

Angela Frenchel, 31, the owner of Dovatex, says she is proud of the conditions at her plant, where she has a turnover of Pounds 3m a year. She claims workers are paid an average of 3m llei (Pounds 113) a month but Stavarache says she earns just 1.25m llei (Pounds 47).