"Interviews with factory employees refute Shein’s promises to make improvements" 14 May 2024

Two years after our pioneering investigation into Shein’s southern Chinese manufacturing plants, a follow-up investigation highlights what the online fashion giant’s sustainability rhetoric is worth. Illegal working hours and piecework wages remain a typical feature of the everyday lives of the workers interviewed. Hence the doubt that is cast over a factory audit commissioned by Shein...

“I work every day from 8 in the morning to 10.30 at night and take one day off each month. I can’t afford any more days off because it costs too much.”...

...the “Supplier Factory Wage Investigation Audit” commissioned in early 2022 stated that the salaries paid by Shein suppliers in southern China were above average...we first asked Shein and then the three audit organizations SGS, TÜV Rheinland and Intertek, which performed the audit together, to allow us a look at the complete report – but to no avail...

A later wage investigation...highlights...that overtime pay accounts for an average of 37 percent of the wages paid, which is a huge proportion...

Some interviewees observed a significant increase in the number of surveillance cameras installed in and around suppliers. They believed that the images are forwarded to Shein in real time to allow the company to enforce their regulations. One of these is the ban on child labour. It was summer holidays when we were conducting our interviews, and we could also see toddlers and young people in the workshops. Babysitting was often done in the workplace, especially in the small, unregulated companies. Teenagers, who were 14 or 15 years old according to the investigators’ estimates, performed simple tasks, such as packaging, or sat at the sewing machines themselves...

More feared among the needleworkers than these inspections are the seemingly rigid quality controls...careless quality controllers would even have to pay a fine of between 300 and 1000 yuan...