{"id":182506,"date":"2019-01-22T07:44:38","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T07:44:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=182506"},"modified":"2019-01-25T06:46:19","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T06:46:19","slug":"revealed-spice-girls-t-shirts-made-in-factory-paying-staff-35p-an-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=182506","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: Spice Girls T-shirts made in factory paying staff 35p an hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

Simon Murphy \u2013 The Guardian Jan 20, 2019<\/h1>\n
\"Spice<\/a>

Spice Girls T-shirts. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n

Spice Girls T-shirts sold to raise money for Comic Relief\u2019s \u201cgender justice\u201d campaign were made at a factory in Bangladesh where women earn the equivalent of 35p an hour during shifts in which they claim to be verbally abused and harassed, a Guardian investigation has found.<\/span><\/p>\n

The charity tops, bearing the message \u201c#IWannaBeASpiceGirl\u201d, were produced by mostly female machinists who said they were forced to work up to 16 hours a day and called \u201cdaughters of prostitutes\u201d by managers for not hitting targets.<\/span><\/p>\n

Money raised from sales of the \u00a319.40 T-shirts will be donated to Comic Relief\u2019s fund to help \u201cchampion equality for women\u201d. The charity is due to receive \u00a311.60 for each of the T-shirts, which were commissioned and designed by the band, but said it has yet to be given any money.<\/span><\/p>\n

Announcing the partnership, the Spice Girls said the cause was important to them because \u201cequality and the movement of people power have always been at the heart of the band\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

But one of the machinists at the factory<\/a><\/strong><\/span> that produced the garments \u2013 modelled on social media by the TV presenter Holly Willoughby, the singers Sam Smith and Jessie J, and the Olympian Jessica Ennis-Hill \u2013 said: \u201cWe don\u2019t get paid enough and we work in inhuman conditions.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The T-shirts, which also have the words \u201cgender justice\u201d on the back, were made by workers earning significantly less than a living wage. The factory is part-owned by a minister in Bangladesh\u2019s authoritarian coalition government, which won 96<\/a>% of the vote<\/a><\/strong><\/span> last month in an election described as \u201cfarcical\u201d by critics. There is no suggestion any of the celebrities were aware of conditions at the factory.<\/span><\/p>\n

A spokesman for the Spice Girls said they were \u201cdeeply shocked and appalled\u201d and would personally fund an investigation into the factory\u2019s working conditions. Comic Relief<\/a> <\/strong><\/span>said the charity was \u201cshocked and concerned\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Continues \u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spice Girls’ \u00a319.40 T-shirts raising money for a ‘gender justice’ campaign ‘are made in a Bangladesh factory where women earn 35p an hour’ working up to 16 hours a day <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Miscellaneous"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=182506"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182506\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182538,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182506\/revisions\/182538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=182506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=182506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=182506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}