"Brands Fail to Disclose Audits Findings Related to Forced Labor Indicators, Leave Workers in Lurch,"

For well over a year, Transparentem has urged buyers to collaborate with their direct manufacturers to repay significant recruitment fees, which migrant workers told Transparentem they had paid. Brands said that they had commissioned audits that contradicted Transparentem’s findings, but repeatedly refused to disclose those audit reports.

Now, it has become clear that some misrepresentation of the audits occurred. According to a recent Sourcing Journal article:

...Verité said that the buyer group’s responses [to Transparentem] not only did not accurately reflect its findings, some mischaracterized or selectively excerpted them in a way that was misleading. The civil society organization, for instance, said that its assessments found widespread evidence of recruitment fees being charged, including up to $2,300 at one factory. At another, close to 100 workers declined to disclose how much they paid to recruitment agents for fear of retaliation and only felt comfortable divulging the payments they made to other parties for internal travel and food....

The Verité report clearly stated these workers paid prohibited recruitment fees and that employer procedures for detecting, remediating, and preventing these practices were deficient,” a Verité spokesperson said. “Verité findings related to deception, intimidation and threats, and grievance mechanisms were also not fairly reflected in the published buyer responses and Transparentem’s report. Buyer groups declined Verité’s request to share the reports with Transparentem.

Transparentem urges the following brands to work with their suppliers to repay recruitment fees to workers that until now have been left holding the bag. Transparentem also strongly urges the brands to disclose the audit reports in full and all future audit reports throughout their supply chains. These brands participated in buyer groups that commissioned Verité to conduct assessments, did not disclose those assessments, and so far have not participated in any repayment of recruitment fees: Boden, Centric Brands, Diesel, The Foschini Group, G-Star Raw, Rodd & Gunn, and WE Fashion.

[For full list of sources see attachment.]