A victory for working women. More than a thousand Thai workers from a bra factory that supplied the American lingerie brand Victoria’s Secret, dismissed, received a total compensation of 8.3 million dollars (7.3 million euros) , workers’ rights advocates announced on Saturday May 28.
Brilliant Alliance Thai closed its factory in Samut Prakan, south of Bangkok, in March 2021 after going bankrupt. But the 1,250 laid off workers, many of whom had worked at the factory for more than a decade, had not received the severance pay required by Thai law. “For several months, we have been in contact with the owners of the factory to find a solution”, said Victoria’s Secret in a statement.
A year of protest
The settlement is the largest ever reached by a garment factory for non-payment for work performed, according to the international workers’ rights group Solidarity Centre. For a year, these dismissed workers and Thai union representatives have been demonstrating in front of the government headquarters in Bangkok to obtain the compensation due.
According a report (in English) from April 2021 from the workers’ advocacy group, Worker Rights Consortium, similar cases of non-payment of wages were recorded in 31 garment factories in nine countries. The advocacy group’s executive director said the cases were just the “tip of the iceberg” and that this problem exploded during the pandemic, due to a drop in clothing orders.
He estimated that some $500 million is owed to garment workers around the world as a result of factory closures and unpaid severance pay.
