UK giants Primark, Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Arcadia amongst those retail groups which have confirmed that they have cancelled and suspended orders for ranges being produced in third world countries, including Bangladesh, due to the Covid-19 retailing restrictions. Tesco, Next and Marks & Spencer have agreed to honour existing orders already produced, as have H&M & Inditex, but none is placing any new orders until there is clear guidance on when the lockdowns across the UK and Europe might end.
The knock-on effect of this is the retrenchment of millions of third world garment and textile mill workers who, unlike their European counterparts, have no welfare safety net to fall back on. With most of the UK and European retail groups postponing delivery of orders – and, therefore, invoices for completed work – many manufacturers are facing bankruptcy. Tellingly the brands are leveraging force majeure clauses in contracts to extricate themselves from agreements leaving their suppliers and employees high & dry. This is all the more galling when certain of these UK businesses are headed by very wealthy individuals who are not only walking away from the suppliers who have enabled them to maximise their margins but are, in some cases, also simultaneously pocketing vast subsidies to enable them to furlough vast numbers of their UK employees. How can that be justified?
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