On the Line is a weekly roundup of sourcing and labor quick hits in the apparel and footwear industry, from worker protests to boardroom maneuvering, tracking the developments shaping conditions on the factory floor and beyond.
Broken audits
Major fashion companies such as Gap Inc., Levi Strauss & Co., Primark and H&M Group are using a faulty billion-dollar audit system that is “systemically silencing” garment workers in Pakistan, despite widespread evidence of labor violations in the sector, a new report from Labour Behind the Label said Thursday. A combination of unequal power dynamics and what the U.K. labor group describes as a “routine devaluation” of worker testimony has, the report said, “systematically excluded” garment workers producing for some of the world’s most recognizable brands from the processes designed to protect them.
Drawing on the testimonies of 255 workers across eight factories in Pakistan, the report portrays an industry beset by pervasive unlawful wages, excessive working hours, harassment, bullying, surveillance and intimidation. Workers, it said, are unable to report abuse without risking retaliation, such as wage cuts or dismissal, creating a “culture of fear” that allows international buyers to “do the bare minimum” to comply with local laws and international standards.
“If brands are serious about responsible business, they must move beyond audit-driven compliance and invest in systems that guarantee freedom of association and place workers at the center of monitoring and remediation,” Khalid Mahmood, director of Labour Education Foundation Pakistan, said in a statement. “Workers are not just beneficiaries of due diligence; they are its most credible source of evidence. As long as workers are denied freedom of association and a genuine voice, brands will keep hearing what factories want them to hear instead of what workers are forced to endure.”
Of the workers surveyed, two-thirds reported being pressured into overtime, with 62 percent saying they were not paid the legally required double rate. More than one-third received no social security benefits, and 65 percent reported earning less than the legal minimum wage when factoring in skill level and overtime. Some 71 percent reported their wages were insufficient to meet basic household needs.
None of this is new or surprising. Nor were the brand responses in the report, which ranged from promising corrective action plans to pushing back against allegations they say are unproven. Some failed to acknowledge correspondence.
The report also found evidence that some factories are actively gaming audits by manipulating, fabricating or strategically presenting certain documents, or by choosing an auditor they know is likely to deliver a favorable outcome. Consultants hired to help a factory pass an audit were also cited as a problem.
“Fashion is facing a credibility crisis,” Anna Bryher, policy lead for Labour Behind the Label, said in a statement. “For far too long, international brands have relied on tick-box compliance and superficial audit systems that fail to capture the realities experienced by workers in Pakistan. The legitimacy of how brands say they can source from low-wage production countries where exploitation is rife is at stake.”
Factories in flames
More than 200 workers at a garment factory in Vietnam’s Dong Thap Province were safely evacuated after a fire broke out Wednesday morning local time, though authorities are still assessing property damage, local media reported.
Thanh Nien said An Long Garment Co., which produces for brands such as Kiabi and is audited by Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production, according to public records, called in fire and rescue police to help fight the flames after its own efforts proved ineffective due to their rapid spread.
Early findings indicate the fire started in An Long Garment Co.’s production workshop.
The incident came two months after a fire at Uniwin Vietnam Co. in Dong Nai Province tore through the facility’s production space, destroying machinery and other equipment and jeopardizing the jobs of 1,350 workers. Textiles, it hardly needs saying, are highly flammable. In Uniwin Vietnam Co.’s case, it took a day for 47 fire trucks, a firefighting robot and 280 personnel from the Dong Nai fire department to extinguish the flames, which burned fiercely enough that plumes of smoke were visible several kilometers away.
More tragically, a fire at a shoe factory in China’s Fujian province earlier this month killed at least 28 people. A fire official told China Central Television that the flames spread quickly because of the flammable adhesives and materials stored on the ground floor.
Partners for Dignity and Rights, a New York nonprofit, said in a blog post Thursday that Fujian Huiteng Shoes, which made shoes for both Chinese and international brands, was audited against Amfori’s Business Social Compliance Initiative and Business Environmental Performance Initiative standards shortly before the disaster, earning a B grade overall and an A for occupational safety and health.
“So far, the response from JD Sports, one of the buyers from the factory, and Amfori BSCI has been little more than condolences, thoughts, and the vague promise of investigation,” wrote Anne Canning, Partners for Dignity and Rights’ campaign manager. “This is not the first time we’ve been here. But this fatal fire suggests that all the past thoughts, promises, and investigations have not brought actual change.”
Amfori said on social media that it is reviewing available information to “better understand the circumstances,” since the incident is under investigation and a cause has not yet been officially confirmed. JD Sports said in a statement that it has not placed any orders with the factory since 2025 and that the last products made for the company were shipped in January 2026.
Drained energy, drained wages
Extreme heat is costing India’s informal workers billions in lost wages, the International Institute for Environment and Development said this week. Its new research estimates the annual hit at roughly $78 billion, or nearly 2 percent of India’s gross domestic product in 2024.
In a survey of almost 540 informal laborers in sectors such as construction and garment manufacturing across three cities, the British think tank found that workers were losing up to 24 days of productive work a year to heat, and some were forced to cut back on food because of the lost income. Nearly one-fifth of respondents said they experienced kidney problems from chronic dehydration and a lack of bathroom access.
Extrapolating its findings to the national level, the study suggests chronic kidney disease may account for some 4.5 billion lost workdays a year, or $23 billion in lost wages, equal to 0.58 percent of India’s GDP. Heat-related productivity losses separate from kidney problems are estimated at around 11 billion workdays, or $55 billion in wages, amounting to 1.41 percent of GDP.
Informal workers, who make up nearly 90 percent of India’s workforce, generally lack job security and often don’t have decent housing, IIED noted. Survey respondents said their dwellings stayed oppressively hot even at night because overcrowding and poor construction trapped the heat.
“Some of the stories we heard from workers about their experiences of extreme heat were genuinely horrifying,” Ritu Bharadwaj, IIED’s director of climate resilience, finance and loss and damage, said in a statement. “A machine operator told us he collapsed during a 12-hour shift with no shade or cool water provided, and his colleagues had to get him to hospital themselves. His boss docked his wages. Another person said she’d worked for the same clothes factory for a decade and that in that time, no changes at all had been made to mitigate heat exposure. She has to operate in a small, poorly ventilated room alongside steam presses that make it feel like a ‘furnace.’”
These, she said, are “Victorian-era working conditions” that are “completely unacceptable in the 21st century.”
“Imagine how India’s economy would boom if decent housing and workplace protections were made a priority,” Bharadwaj said. “Workers would have more cash in their pockets to circulate back into goods and services, and the state could concentrate on more productive things than providing hospital treatment for easily avoidable heat stress.”
Border closures woes
A Thai-owned Nike supplier in Cambodia’s Poipet O’Neang Special Economic Zone has suspended work, leaving more than 2,500 workers jobless after the yearlong border closure and falling orders disrupted production.
In minutes from a meeting with the Labour and Vocational Training Ministry and union representatives, company manager Thitipong Wongsayang said the shutdown was driven by economic problems and difficulties moving raw materials and finished goods. He said the company had received no further orders from brand owners and would suspend production until August 30, 2026, while workers remain entitled to termination benefits under labor law.
Hi-Tech Apparel (Cambodia) also agreed to preserve benefits for female workers, including social security contributions for pregnant workers until delivery, half pay during 90 days of maternity leave, and a $5 monthly allowance for workers with children aged 18 to 36 months.
Keo Channet, deputy president of the Hi-Tech Apparel workers’ union, told Kiripost the stoppage effectively amounts to a shutdown of the company’s Cambodia operations. She said the factory had been under strain since the border conflict escalated, with falling orders and higher logistics costs after raw materials had to be rerouted through Sihanoukville.
Chinese-owned ML Intimate Apparel also closed in April, laying off about 700 workers after orders from brands like Fenty, Thirdlove and Hunkemöller fell amid the prolonged border closure.
The shutdown also came after what the Clean Clothes Campaign described as a long-running dispute between factory management and workers over the right to organize and delayed wage payments. The labor consortium said it was concerned that ML Intimate, owned by Hong Kong-based Magic Link Garment, may fail to pay workers the wages and severance they are owed.
“It’s been a long struggle for us in the face of delayed wages, forced overtime, inadequate support for injured workers, and the long-standing obstruction of independent union organizing,” Mr Tonich, elected union president of Worker’s Protection Union of ML Intimate, said in a statement.
“For more than four years, we organized lawfully and peacefully. We’ve worked hard together as a union to improve working conditions at the factory, despite being targeted and subject to unfair, illegal dismissals, retaliation, constant surveillance, intimidation, threats and harassment,” he added. “Now that the factory has closed, workers need the company and buyers to act responsibly.”
Roadmap, not a cliff
“Today marks a defining moment in the fight to end forced labor,” nonprofit investigative group Transparentem said in a statement Friday, as new U.S. tariffs of 10 to 12.5 percent took effect on imports from more than 80 trading partners, depending on how their ability to enforce bans on goods made with forced labor.
While Transparentem acknowledged that trade interests are “clearly part of what’s driving this action,” it said the move still presents a real opportunity to move forced labor from the “margins of trade policy to its center.”
“We have never seen a moment like this,” the organization said. “But this window won’t stay open forever, and how we take advantage of it will determine whether it closes having driven real progress toward ending forced labor or having simply rearranged where goods are made.”
Turning pressure into lasting change requires workers to remain at the center, backed by real enforcement, remediation, and the freedom to organize. The Trump administration, it added, needs to “build a roadmap, not a cliff” by giving countries a “published, achievable path” to lower tariffs as they make progress. Governments, unions and civil society also need technical assistance to root out forced labor and build the import-ban systems needed to make the measure effective.
Just as importantly, Transparentem said, the United States needs to strengthen enforcement of the bans it already has. The Tariff Act of 1930, through Section 307, already bars imports made with forced labor, and the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act goes further by presuming that certain goods linked to Xinjiang were made with forced labor.
“Companies, investors, and policymakers: the measure of success here isn’t the tariff rate. It’s whether forced labor is eliminated,” it added. “We’re going to take this opportunity, and alongside our partners on the ground and in this fight, make the most of it.”
