Note: On request of the women workers we have interviewed, who have spoken of being afraid of further harassment, we are not revealing their names and those of the export houses they work for.
Veera, a 38-year-old single mother, says she sees the person who sexually harassed her every day at a garment factory in Bengaluru. He is her manager at the factory that makes clothes to be exported for European, especially German, labels like C&A, Esprit, S. Oliver, and Hugo Boss.
The manager never misses a chance to make sexually inappropriate remarks, she says. As if this was not bad enough, Veera says her Dalit identity also makes her an easy target not just for her manager but for her colleagues too.
“There were days when I hated getting out of bed in the morning and going to work. The thought that I’d have to face my manager and everything else that would come up during the day was daunting,” Veera says.
Shortly after she had first been sexually harassed by her manager, Veera reported the incident to the company’s Internal Complaint Committee for sexual harassment at workplace (ICC-SHW). No action was taken, she says. But she began to be threatened by male employees who hold the majority of the leadership roles in the export firm, she adds.
Incidents of sexual harassment are rampant in the garment industry – as many as 30 women Dalit garment workers in Haryana, Karnataka, and Tamil Nadu noted to these reporters.
The women spoke of gender-based violent harassment (GBVH), caste-based discrimination, salary theft, and isolation for either refusing seniors’ unsolicited demands, failing to meet production targets or speaking out against the exploitation in their workplaces.
Kavita (42), a Dalit tailor at an export house also in Karnataka, says she suffers from persistent urinary tract infections (UTI) caused by holding in urine for two to four hours every day. This has also led her menstrual cycle to become irregular and painful, Kavita adds.
Kavita cannot consider taking a toilet break because she needs to meet the target of cutting 120 cloth pieces per hour at her company, which produces garments for European brands C&A, Bershka, Zara, Pull & Bear, Mango, and Stradivarius. These brands are listed on the company’s website.
“If a single tailor fails to meet her goal, the male managers either do not allow the other workers to leave until the tailor completes her target, or leave her behind in the factory, or threaten her with forceful termination,” says Kavita.
For the company’s 4,000 workers, the two scheduled breaks – 10 minutes at teatime and 20 minutes at lunchtime – are simply spent waiting for a turn to use the restroom. As a result, Kavita, and other female workers would frequently “skip meals and restroom breaks” in order to “meet the quotas.”
India’s garment industry is a market worth around US $ 100 billion, employing 51 million people, formally, and an additional 68 million people, informally. India is a major garment producer for Western nations and the world’s second-largest exporter of textiles.
Even though women make up one of the largest percentages of the workforce – more than 70% – in the global supply chains of the apparel sector, a closer examination of the situation reveals that women experience the highest levels of harassment in a workplace predominantly run by male supervisors, managers and contractors.
Saroja, general secretary and founding member of India’s Garment Labour Union (GLU), agrees that the work culture is mostly patriarchal in nature.
“The workforce in this industry is 90% female, but men occupy all the senior job positions including floor managers, supervisors or senior tailors. So, if the production is delayed, women workers will be punished with isolation, suspension, or forced termination. This explains why women are often subjected to workplace harassment, including sexual harassment, verbal and emotional assaults,” says Saroja.
For Sanchita Banerjee Saxena, a professor at UC Berkeley who studies labour and garment supply chains in Asia, the reason gender-based violence (GBV) occurs so frequently and does not improve is due to the “business model of the fashion industry.” She says:
“Fast fashion makes it worse, but generally the business model demands a very quick turnaround and involves bids at the lowest price possible. The pressure that brands put on suppliers eventually trickles down to women in the workforce, forcing them to work for inhumane hours.”
During and after the COVID-19 outbreak, women garment workers experienced an increase in GBVH and other forms of harassment. According to a Business & Human Rights Resource Centre report, these cases were reported from the production units of well-known European brands.
GBVH is considered as a human rights violation under the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 190 (C190) and Recommendation 206 (R206) on Violence and Harassment in the Workplace.)
Wage theft
Seema (48 years old) receives Rs 11,783 (€126) a month as a tailor at an export company in Gurgaon in Haryana. She was shocked to find out that the company had never contributed towards her Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) for six years, despite deducting the amount from her monthly salary.
The Employees’ State Insurance (ESI) and Provident Fund (PF) are government-mandated social security schemes for employees earning up to Rs 15,000 per month, which employers collect from pay each month. ESI provides healthcare insurance in the event of illness or pregnancy, whilst PF serves as a retirement fund.
“When I checked with the ESI department, they told me that money was never put in because my name appears to be incorrect on both my PAN card and Aadhaar. I want to know why I wasn’t informed. Where did the money go?” Seema asks.
Despite formal complaints to her workplace seniors, Seema is yet to receive her ESI.
When Nandini (48), a tailor in a Bengaluru export company who belongs to a Dalit community, refused to quit despite her management’s repeated warnings, they punished her by paying her Rs 5 (€ 0.054) less per day than the 13 other women tailors. Her fault was that she had complained to the police about her persistent mistreatment in the hands of her employers. It was only after she contacted the state workers union, GLU, that she was paid on par with others.
Illustration: Prashant
Her monthly salary today is Rs 12,500 (€138), after deduction of Rs 1,500 (€15) for ESI and PF. Even after eight years of backbreaking eight- to nine-hour shifts that require her to stand in one position to work, women’s wages are paltry.
“The managers would ask for sexual favour from women workers in exchange for a wage increase, and the ones who give in to their demands get the raise. It is an unsafe environment,” says Kavita.
According to Kumar Ravishankar, lawyer and vice-president of Garment and Allied Workers Union in Haryana (GAWU), complaints filed through factory’s grievance redress mechanisms channels are mostly not addressed.
“Using the labour department leads to several forms of retaliation for workers, right from transfers into other departments, more overtime, harassment by supervisors and termination. Even in cases of sexual harassment, victims are penalised and perpetrators continue to work in the factory,” Ravishankar says.
All of these incidents noted in this report occurred during and after the COVID-19 lockdown. Suppliers of European companies including as Adidas, H&M, Inditex, Bestsellers, Primark, as well as PVH, VH, Lindex, Next, M&S, GAP, Levis, Walmart, and American Eagle Outfitter, were called out for wage theft during the pandemic. Later, some of them chose to compensate suppliers for the workers’ unpaid wages.
On March 29, 2020, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued an order requiring all employers to pay their employees full salaries throughout the lockdown. As many as 188 employers filed a petition with the Supreme Court to challenge this. On June 4, it was agreed that employers cannot face coercive measures for failing to pay salaries during the lockdown.
Finally, on June 12, the Supreme Court decided that the state has to assist in salary discussions between companies and employees while the country is under lockdown.
“GLU wrote to all brands and suppliers during the pandemic, demanding that they ensure the workers’ wages and safety. However, several brands responded saying, ‘We don’t have direct contracts with the workers, but with the suppliers, thus we are not accountable in this case’,” Saroja said.
Since April 2020, more than 400,000 Karnataka garment workers have not received the state’s lawful minimum wage, especially in the tailoring sector. And in Tamil Nadu, the government has not revised the wages of its 600,000 garment workers since 2014.
The Garment and Textile Workers Union (GATWU) reports that the average monthly income for textile workers in India is Rs.10,441 (€115) much lower than the Asia Floor Wage Alliance’s calculated living wage of Rs 33,920 (€375).
Impact of Binding Agreement, EU CSDDD, & Supply Chain Act
As late as 2022, India’s first legally binding agreement – Dindigul Agreement – was signed between global brands H&M Group, Gap Inc., and PVH Corp., as well as Eastman Exports and Tamil Nadu Textile and Common Labour Union (TTCU), the Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA), and Global Labour Justice-International Labour Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), with an aim to end the GBVH at Eastman Exports.
The Agreement is also the first “enforceable brand agreement” in Asia to address gender and caste-based violence in textile supply chains.
The Dindigul Agreement was signed in response to global outrage following the death of Jeyasre Kathiravel, a 20-year-old Dalit textile worker of Eastman Exports, an H&M supplier in Tamil Nadu. She was found murdered by a workplace senior.
According to Nandita Shivakumar, a labour rights researcher and campaigner who works with multiple garment worker unions in India, the Dindigul Agreement provides grievance mechanisms and remediation that are decentralised, quick to respond, and accessible in workers’ native languages, which is critical for effective redressal.
“These mechanisms complement rather than replace domestic law (like the POSH Act), ensuring that actions taken are aligned with national standards while offering workers faster and a more localised recourse to justice,” shares Shivakumar.
Saxena believes that workers’ unions have an important role to play in ensuring agreements are binding. “Having the safe-circle approach, involving unions directly in the garment factory, making workers feel comfortable to report their grievances, as well as using economic pressure like saying if you (brands) do not comply, we (workers) are going to stop working with you – are some of the best efforts in the Dindigul Agreement.”
But, can binding agreements alone help address the issue of GBVH?
Shivakumar emphasises that legally binding agreements enable genuine, long-term engagement between local-level supplier management, local trade unions, and fashion brands, which source from the factories.
“Brand-led initiatives and ‘enforceable brand agreements’ are worker-driven and enforceable, holding brands accountable while empowering workers and unions to have a say in improving their own working conditions. However, without consistent sourcing from brands, these agreements cannot be fully successful. Brands need to commit to sourcing from factories with enforceable brand agreements in place, as this incentivises compliance from suppliers and ensures that improvements in working conditions are sustainable,” she says.
Saxena echoes the same.
“Binding agreements are really important as it pushes for a change in behaviour. What it does is, it uses economic pressure on the suppliers. The suppliers must make the changes, if they don’t, then the companies or fashion brands can say, ‘We will terminate our relationship with you’.”
“What the Agreement doesn’t address is that the brands are not obligated to change their business model. They are not obligated to improve the way they interact with their suppliers. That’s also really important,” she adds.
TheThe European Union Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and German Supply Chain Act is hailed as an important measure towards holding businesses, both non-EU and EU, accountable for any adverse impacts on human rights, labour practices, and the environment throughout value chain. This includes firm with ties to India.
Illustration: Prashant
“While mandatory human rights legislation like the European CSDDD and the German Supply Chain Act are important steps in bringing greater accountability to global supply chains, but it’s still very hard to see whether these laws will lead to genuine change on the ground,” says Shivakumar.
“What we’re currently observing is a rise in third-party agencies whose primary role is to help companies comply with these new laws. The challenge is whether these intermediaries will actually promote access to remedy for workers and facilitate meaningful stakeholder dialogue, or whether they will become another layer of bureaucracy that allows brands to check compliance boxes without addressing the root issues in their supply chains,” he says.
Every woman worker from the garment Industry in India these reporters spoke with had no idea which European brands they worked for, making it easier for well-known labels to escape accountability for widespread human rights abuses.
Sina Marx, Femnet’s Consultant for Supply Chain Legislation, explains that such workers only come to know of the brand if they are the one to sew the labels on.
“But even if a woman is lucky enough to know which company is at the end of the supply chain and she has proof, the process is still not really helpful. Though one can file a complaint under the Supply Chain Act, more than often than not, not much happens to such a complaint,” Marx says.
New legislation, such as the German Supply Chain (Due Diligence) Act, has sought to address this. According to this legislation, German companies with more than 1,000 employees must monitor every stage of their products’ supply chain to ensure that human and labour rights are not violated. This also applies to subcontractors worldwide, including garment factories situated in India.
Does the Sumangali scheme still exist?
The term ‘Sumangali’ means ‘happy brides’ in Tamil. This word was tactfully used by the garment industry in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which have the most garment factories in India, to employ girls aged 14 to 18 – mostly from Dalit backgrounds – without being called out for child labour.
Under the scheme companies would assure the girls and their families that after working for three to four years in the mills, their daughters would be paid a lump sum of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh (€553 to €1100), enough to pay for their weddings and that they will also receive gifts of gold and household items.
In 2014, the Madras high court scrapped the scheme following numerous reports of rape, sexual harassment, and child trafficking. However, girls are still being approached with the same false promises, not only from within the region but also from other states such as Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal, and Assam.
Janaki, a Sumangali system survivor who now serves as secretary of the District Women Federation in Erode and a member of the Integrated Leadership Forum Against Trafficking (ILFAT), explains, “Initially, the Sumangali system was popular and widely accepted in the community. Now, the system has been abolished on paper, but survives under the guise of a new employment structure.”
Around 300 kilometres away from Bengaluru, Nisha, 19, resides in the Erode district of Tamil Nadu region. She had no idea that working for an export house for a month during her 2018 summer vacation bring endless trials.
Nisha was 14 when an akka (older sister in Tamil) from her village gave her an offer to work as a helper at the same export house in Tirupur where she was employed. The older woman would pay a visit to her hometown during the summer vacation, knowing that most girls stay at home and have free time then. Nisha was promised a daily pay of Rs 200 (€2), so she left her village with three other girls and went to live at the company’s hostel.
“The lady promised us that we will have lots of fun in the factory, and we will get many gifts during festivals, besides a good salary,” shares Nisha.
However, when she arrived at the workplace, she was faced with tedious work. On her first day at the export house, the older woman told her that she was inexperienced and needed to learn the craft first, so she would receive Rs 150 (€1.50) instead. She found that at the women’s hostel, she would have to share her tiny room with eight others and pay Rs 300 (€3) per week for groceries.
“We were not informed about any of these in advance. It was shocking to us…By the end of the month, I earned only Rs 3,000 (€30).”
Soon, the owner of the factory started using coercion and other tactics to harass girls and women.
Illustration: Prashant.
“One night, I woke up to witness him (the owner) exiting my female hostelmate’s room. My friends and I were only about 13 or 14 years old, and scared. We feared he would do the same with us as well,” says Nisha.
In 2023, two garment workers from two different mills in Tirupur and Bengaluru corroborated that girls as young as 15 and 17 are often brought into the factories for tailoring and stitching work. They are placed in companies’ hostels under strict surveillance, are not allowed to speak with family on phone alone, or to interact with coworkers, union members, and even go out.
“The contractors from states like Assam, West Bengal and Odisha would bring young women under the guise of a three-month internship at an export firm and then leave you with no choice but to stay on. Then they will create a bogus Aadhaar card to present you as an adult,” stated a migrant worker from Odisha working in a Bengaluru garment factory who claimed that there are 12 underage girls from West Bengal working in the facility.
A male migrant worker from a Tirupur mill said, “During an audit or when foreign visitors come, the company sends the girls to an unknown place, and after the visitors leave, they are brought back to work the next day. There are no records of them in the official books, so nobody finds out, ever.”
Janaki says that the garment and textile business primarily employs adolescent girls for two reasons.
“First, compared to adult workers, they are less demanding in terms of pay. They also work hard, take fewer leaves, and can produce clothes more quickly within the targeted time. Second, the high rates of illiteracy, ignorance, poverty, and helplessness among the families coming from extremely underdeveloped and marginalised sections of the southern states, as well as regions like Bihar, Odisha, Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, etc. leave the girls with no choice but to fall for it. Additionally, they are not given any government or public holidays, nor do they have any proof to support that they were working in the textile or garment industry.”
She further says that previously, many agents would go to the villages looking for girls, but now companies assign workers. “The commission paid to each worker for one minor girl is Rs 2,000, but they [the girls] are not paid a proper salary,” Janaki adds.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, child labour and forced labour in the textile industry rose exponentially. As per the report by International Justice Mission, numerous garment producers were found to have recruited “child labourers and young people to work in spinning mills by giving them false promises” during the lockdown.
Stories of women like Veera, Kavita, Seema, and Nisha show the tough reality in India’s garment industry despite the Dindigul Agreement, European CSDDD or any new laws.
“The unsustainable fashion business model, with its relentless pressure on suppliers and disregard for workers’ rights, is a key driver of the GBVH faced by women in the garment sector. Addressing GBVH requires confronting these root causes within supply chains, and ensuring that brands take responsibility for the working conditions they create through their purchasing practices,” says Shivakumar.
Pari Saikia is an independent human trafficking journalist who reports from Southeast Asia and Europe. She is a Journalism Fund Europe fellow for 2023, 2022, and 2021.
Rohit Upadhyay is an independent journalist and YouTuber focused on minority rights, environmental issues, and public health. He is a 2023 Journalism Fund Europe fellow.
This investigation was conducted with support from Journalism Fund, under the Modern Slavery Grant Unveiled programme.
