22 January 2019 - Spice Girls T-shirts for Comic Relief Made in Factory Paying Staff 35p an Hour
Spice Girls T-shirts sold to raise money for Comic Relief 'made in factory paying staff 35p an hour'
Sophie Williams (Evening Standard, 21/01/2019)
Spice Girls T-shirts sold to raise money for a Comic Reliefcampaign were made in a factory where workers are paid 35p an hour, according to reports.
The garments aim to raise money for the charity’s “gender justice” campaign and are emblazoned with the phrase #Iwannabeaspicegirl.
The T-shirts cost £19.40 with 100 per cent of the proceeds go towards the campaign, which helps champion equality for women.
The Spice Girls Are “Shocked And Appalled” By Gender Justice T-Shirt Reports
Alice Newbold (Vogue, 21/01/2019)
The Spice Girls have released a statement declaring that the band is “deeply shocked and appalled” by investigative reports which found that its Comic Relief “gender justice” T-shirts were made in a Bangladesh factory where women earn the equivalent of 35p an hour.
The charity tees, which bear the message “#IWannaBeASpiceGirl”, were produced by mostly female machinists who told The Guardian that they were forced to work up to 16 hours a day and were verbally abused and harassed for not hitting targets. Comic Relief is due to receive £11.60 from the sales of each £19.40 T-shirt for its Power Up initiative, which is part of its Gender Justice campaign, but is yet to receive any money from the garments sold during a three-week period last year.
'Inhuman conditions': life in factory making Spice Girls T-shirts
Simon Murphy (The Guardian, 20/01/2019)
Salma has never even heard of the Spice Girls. Her life, hunched over a sewing machine for up to 16 hours a day, is a world away from the luxuries enjoyed by the millionaire pop band.
But while neither knows it, Salma and the Spice Girls are connected. The factory where she has worked for more than five years, off a narrow, winding road three hours’ drive from Dhaka, is where charity T-shirts designed by the group were made.
The £19.40 garments were produced on behalf of the Spice Girls and then sold to raise money for a Comic Relief campaign intended to “champion equality for women”, which pointed out how “women earn less”. It is a reality Salma knows only too well.
Bangladesh factory workers making Spice Girls 'gender justice' T-shirts earn $2 a day
Vita Molyneux (Newshub, 21/01/2019)
Factory workers in Bangladesh say they are suffering inhumane working conditions sewing charity T-shirts for the Spice Girls.
The shirts retail for NZ$37, and according to the website selling them, all proceeds support charities that are "trying to tackle women's issues via Comic Relief's Gender Justice initiative".
A worker for Interstoff Apparel, the company that manufactures the shirts, says employees work 16-hour days with no sick leave, no breaks and suffer verbal abuse from their management.