Factory: New Best Global Textile Co. Ltd.
Key Buyers: Maurices, Variety Wholesalers, YM
Last Updated: 2021
Case Summary
The apparel industry’s chronically low wages left most garment workers with no savings on the eve of the Covid-19 crisis. Since most governments in apparel exporting countries provide little or no unemployment benefits, the only thing standing between an out-of-work garment worker and immediate poverty for her family are the legally mandated severance benefits that most garment workers are due upon termination.
Research by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) reveals that many garment workers who were fired during the pandemic have been denied some or all of this essential compensation, in violation of the law and the labor rights obligations of the brands and retailers whose clothes they sewed.
New Best Global Textile is one of the 31 export garment factories identified in the WRC’s report, Fired, Then Robbed: Fashion brands’ complicity in wage theft during Covid-19, which still owed workers legally mandated terminal compensation as of April 2021.
In March 2020, New Best Global Textile dismissed 500 workers when it closed. As of April 2021, these workers were still waiting for $300,000 in legally owed compensation.
New Best Global Textile Co. Ltd. was a sewing facility located at Building #C12, Phum Trapaing Romchek, Sangkat Chom Chao, Khan Porsenchey, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In 2014, Roo Hsing Group gained a controlling interest in the factory, with three seats on the Board of Directors. Import records show New Best shipments in February 2020 to YM Inc., in January 2020 to Variety Wholesalers, and in January 2020 to Maurices (acquired in 2019 by OpCapita from Ascena). Primark stated to the WRC that it received its last order from New Best Global Textile in September 2019 and that the factory ceased to be an approved supplier prior to Covid-19. Primark also claimed that the site’s landlord paid workers in line with local legal requirements. However, the WRC found that the workers only received part of the terminal compensation they are legally owed.
Read More: