7/29/2020 A Close Look at a Fashion Supply Chain Is Not Pretty - The New York Times Different views outside of Pen Apparel. Photo Illustration by The New York Times; Google Street View The Slow Route to Change On a Zoom call last week, Roger Lee, the chief executive officer of TAL Group, offered some answers. Mr. Lee said that there were deep-rooted problems in worker recruitment across the apparel industry. Although the numbers of migrant workers were particularly high in its Malaysian factories, 80 percent of TAL’s total employees are local employees, he said. And despite Transparentem’s allegations of potential forced labor in Malaysia — and the fact that TAL had agreed to pay workers’ compensation — he said that such exploitation no longer existed inside the company. According to Mr. Lee, TAL factory loans are waived when a worker leaves for whatever reason, meaning they were not forced to stay against their will (though that would not reduce any debts accrued with agents in their home countries). Mr. Lee said that on Jan. 1, 2020, TAL changed its policy to cover recruitment fees for all new migrant recruits, a policy that was communicated to customers before the company was aware of the Transparentem investigation. TAL had also since halted factory loan salary deductions of current workers. That move was part of an internal project with significant expenses to improve labor policies, he said. It required the company to offset factory loans by, in part, raising the prices it charged the brands whose clothes it makes. “This kind of progress is important but it cannot be done alone by suppliers,” said Mr. Lee, who added that TAL had invested in worker hotlines and educational classes to prevent exploitation. A longer timeline had been necessary to allow the brands it supplied to make the necessary cost adjustments and absorb the migrant workers’ recruitment costs. “These changes are now in place for workers we hire in the future,” he continued. “But what we’ve been negotiating with Transparentem is how to go back in time to give these migrants what they are owed from events that took place outside Malaysia. It is not impossible. But in this climate, it is not easy either.” With some clients declaring bankruptcy (Brooks Brothers and J. Crew), and most clients reducing orders, TAL said it had seen a decline of almost 50 percent in orders and was absorbing significant levels of bad debt. Delman Lee, the president and chief technology officer of TAL Apparel, said that the full fund amount could not be disclosed “because payments differ depending on the individual worker.” The company was focused on creating a safe environment for workers, he said, which included the payment of allowances, regular temperature checks and, in some cases, repatriation flights to countries like Vietnam, as well as matching migrant workers to new local employers in Malaysia. At least 1,200 workers would not receive any compensation from the fund. However, TAL said they have received severance or termination compensations, as required by local law. Although output had ground to a halt in Malaysia, TAL was still paying out wages of $100,000 a day, he said. “We are in a labor-intensive business,” Mr. Lee said of TAL Group, which has generated pre-pandemic annual revenues of more than $850 million. “Inevitably, issues will take place in our factories, but if we are wrong we will always admit we are wrong and do our best to fix them. We know solving one case is the tip of the iceberg.” Ms. Rinsche of Transparentem said that only a handful of brands supplied by TAL’s Malaysian factories contributed to the workers’ relief effort and that she hoped more would come forward after the circulation of the report. “Everyone in the fashion business needs to pay more attention to how they oversee the recruitment of migrant workers, and talk more about the processes required in improving bad practices,” Ms. Rinsche said. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/style/malaysia-forced-labor-garment-workers.html 4/4