"Made in Italy: shame in Italy," a handful of migrant labourers who had travelled from Italy's famed leatherware region Tuscany chanted last week in Geneva outside the flagship store of luxury accessory maker Montblanc, holding placards with the slogan.

Standing about three kilometers from where Montblanc's $76 billion parent Richemont (CFR.S), opens new tab was meeting shareholders, the workers - flanked by more than a dozen Italian and Swiss union officials - accused the pen and watches maker of dropping its supplier Z Production last year because of rising costs.

The Chinese-owned contractor, based in Tuscany, had improved its working conditions in October 2022 after years of irregular contracts and long shifts, workers and union officials told Reuters...

Z Production did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Montblanc said, in a statement to Reuters, it had decided to terminate Z Production's contract in early 2023 because its audits showed the contractor had failed to meet its standards as outlined in Richemont's code of conduct for suppliers...

Z Production and other workshops employed undocumented migrants there with no prior experience in leather-making to produce luxury products for Montblanc and other high-end brands, the sources said, indicating supply chain problems extend beyond Milan...

Speaking in the presence of a union official in the textile hub of Prato in Tuscany, Abbas and Arslan Muhammad, who arrived from Pakistan as undocumented migrants, said they toiled for years alongside dozens of migrants in workshops supplying luxury brands...

Abbas told Reuters he earned between 600 and 700 euros a month from a part-time contract, and between 400 and 500 euros in cash for additional hours. Francesca Ciuffi, an official from union SUDD Cobas who helped organise the Geneva protest, said such practices are still common at workshops in Prato...

A top investigative source told Reuters some suppliers have started to shift production to areas such as Veneto, Campania and Apulia, not currently at the centre of the raids...

[Also refers to Dior, Armani and Alviero Martini.]