Gap to reinforce policy after child labor report
Gap Inc., the biggest U.S. clothing retailer, said it would meet with suppliers to reinforce its manufacturing policies after a newspaper investigation reported that a subcontractor in India was using children to make clothes.
The company withdrew a line of beaded children’s blouses scheduled to be in stores in the U.S. and Europe before Christmas after learning of the violation, the London-based Observer said Sunday.
A newspaper investigation found that children working in slave-like conditions in New Delhi were making garments with serial numbers matching those for a new line Gap had ordered for sale this year, the Observer reported.
“This allegation about an unauthorized facility in India is deeply upsetting,” Dan Henkle, the company’s senior vice president of social responsibility, said in a statement.
“Under absolutely no circumstance is it acceptable for children to produce or work on garments. It’s a non-negotiable for us.”
The San Francisco-based company said it began its own probe after being told of the newspaper investigation Oct. 22. Gap stopped the blouse order and sent letters to 2,000 suppliers calling for a meeting to reinforce its policy on child labor.
Gap requires suppliers to guarantee that they don’t use children to produce garments, and has a team of 90 employees monitoring compliance through unannounced visits and other means, Henkle said. Last year, the company stopped working with 23 violators, he said.
The supplier in this case had hired an unauthorized subcontractor to make blouses for the GapKids line, violating policy, spokesman Bill Chandler said in a telephone interview. The order was a “very small” one, Chandler said. He declined to name the supplier and the subcontractor.
“We were able to pull the product so it could never reach our stores and it will certainly never be sold in our stores,” Chandler said.
The company and other clothing makers have been working to improve conditions in the factories of overseas contractors after being criticized by unions and human-rights organizations over the treatment of employees.
