Victoria’s Secret agrees to finance $8.3 million settlement for laid-off Thai workers

BANGKOK, May 27 (Reuters) – Thai staff who have been sacked past year from a manufacturing unit giving worldwide lingerie brand names like Victoria’s Solution will receive $8.3 million, in what labour activists say is the greatest settlement of its variety in the worldwide garment business.

About 1,200 employees have been laid off without severance pay back and wages owed to them by Amazing Alliance Thai Global Co Ltd (BAT) after it went bankrupt and shut down its manufacturing facility in Samut Prakan province in March 2021.

The incident was 1 of “hundreds of conditions of wage theft” that labour activists say took location in the garment business through the COVID-19 pandemic. The settlement, financed by Victoria’s Magic formula in a mortgage arrangement with BAT’s operator, could established a precedent for global models to improved protect the legal rights of employees in their source chains, in accordance to Scott Nova, Executive Director of the Employee Legal rights Consortium, an intercontinental labour advocacy group.

“Worldwide brands will need to realise that they are not passive buyers, but craze-setters in location labour standards,” mentioned David Welsh, the Thailand director for the Solidarity Center, a U.S.-based mostly employees rights’ advocacy team.

Far more than a calendar year soon after BAT and its Hong Kong-based operator Clover Team refused to pay back the laid-off Thai personnel, Victoria’s Key & Co (VSCO.N)stated this week in an emailed assertion. It will lengthen a mortgage to the homeowners of Clover to finance the settlement.

It was unclear how a lot of the settlement Victoria’s Secret would cover, expressing in the statement that BAT’s owner ended up not “in a situation to conclude this subject on their individual” so the organization “agreed to progress the severance cash to factory owners,” without revealing the amount.

A Thai labour ministry doc noticed by Reuters confirmed the total payment to the personnel like linked expenditures was in a whole of 285.2 million baht ($8.36 million).

Clover had originally reported the staff should concur to hold out 10 yrs to be paid out in comprehensive.

Emily Lau, an government of Clover and a board member of the bankrupt BAT claimed on Friday the payment will be made with “the own assets of owners, Angie and Emily Lau” but did not mention the bank loan from Victoria’s Mystery.

($1 = 34.1500 baht)

Reporting by Panu Wongcha-um and Panarat Thepgumpanat Modifying by Kanupriya and Nick Zieminski

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