Thai garment workers get $8.3 million settlement at Victoria s Secret factory

More than 1,000 Thai garment workers who made bras at a factory supplying lingerie firm Victoria s Secret have received a landmark $8.3 million settlement, labour rights activists said.

After going bankrupt, Brilliant Alliance Thai shut down its Samut Prakan factory in March 2021.

The 1,250 laid-off workers, many of whom had worked at the factory for more than a decade, did not receive the severance payouts mandated under Thai law. A workers rights group claimed that some workers received the equivalent of more than four years of wages under the settlement.

The factory also produced underwear for plus-size American brands Lane Bryant and Torrid, owned by Sycamore Partners but only Victoria s Secret contributed to the settlement via a loan arrangement with the factory owners.

Victoria s Secret said in a statement that an agreement had been reached, but did not disclose the amount involved.

The factory owners had been in contact with them for several months to make sure a resolution was reached, the company said.

Victoria s Secret agreed to advance the severance funds to the factory owners because they were not ultimately able to conclude the matter on their own, because we regret they were not in a position to do so.

The former worker Jitnawatcharee Panad had clocked up 25 years at the factory and said more than a third of the sacked workers were women 45 and older.

If we hadn't fought for fair compensation, we wouldn't have received anything," Jitnawatcharee, who is also president of the Triumph International Workers Union of Thailand, told AFP.

The doors of the labour ministry were locked when we went there to seek help and the minister didn't seem to want to listen to our problem. The International Workers' rights group Solidarity Centre said the agreement is the largest-ever wage theft settlement at an individual garment factory.

It is extremely unprecedented and represents the scale of severance and interest paid on it, as well as direct engagement by the brand, said David Welsh, country director of Solidarity Center Thailand.

For the past year, workers and Thai union representatives have protested outside Government House in Bangkok, calling for their pay.

The Confederation of Industrial Labour of Thailand president Prasit Prasopsuk said some protesting workers had been charged with criminal offenses, including violating public gathering rules during the epidemic.

This case serves as a lesson in the future for the government to make sure foreign companies doing business in Thailand give a portion of their monthly profit for fair compensation when these companies cease domestic operations, he said.

A Worker Rights Consortium report from April last year said it had documented similar wage theft cases at 31 garment factories in nine countries.

Scott Nova, the executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium said those cases were just the tip of the iceberg and that the issue of wage theft in the garment industry had exploded during the epidemic as clothing orders declined.

He estimated that over 500 million garment workers worldwide were owed $500 million because of factory closures and unpaid severance.

Some workers at the Samut Prakan factory received the equivalent of more than four years of wages last week, he said.

It is like the equivalent of a worker's life savings and it is simply stolen. Nova said that it is hard to capture in words what it means to lose that and get it back.