1. Unfair Pay Factsheet
Definition: Employers paying less than the minimum wage to their workers.
Approximately 200,000 people in tea plantations in West Bengal, India, are paid less than £1 a day – half the minimum wage.
Workers are often also forced to endure poor conditions eg long hours – 16 per day, 7 days a week - in unsafe conditions.
Sweatshops: terms used for a factory or workshop, especially in the clothing industry, where manual workers are employed at very low wages for long hours and under poor conditions.
National Minimum Wage Act, 1998, UK – made it illegal to pay workers less than minimum wage amount.
BBC News, Rana Plaza Disaster:
UK Minimum Wage Info:
Extra resource: Undercover: The Refugees Who Make Our Clothes
Panorama goes undercover to find the sweatshops making clothes for the British high street. Darragh MacIntyre discovers refugees working in supply chains of some well-known brands.
Beyonce’s IVY PARK brand denies use of sweatshops:
“Do not exploit the poor because they are poor.” Proverbs 22:22 1