Prada: Union Busting is Just SO Last Season

Prada, which began as a small shop founded by Mario Prada in Milan has become a fashion success story run by his grand daughter Muccia Prada, one of the best-known luxury brands around the world with shops on the most expensive streets of the most expensive world capitals, including one on Old Bond St in London's Mayfair.

Few Prada customers are aware of the conditions under which the ridiculously expensive luxury goods on sale are made - not in Milan but in factories such as the DESA factory in Turkey.

Even some of these rich customers would probably be appalled to learn about the unsafe and unsavoury working conditions, the terribly low pay and the long hours - with shifts up to 40 hours long. They might even be concerned that the workers are denied the freedom to defend their rights through trade union organisation.

In April last year when workers at DESA decided to join the Turkish leather workers union, 44 were sacked and 50 forced to resign from the union. Demonstrations at the factory in Turkey have led to repression and arrest, and when a union leader refused a bribe her family was threatened, and later that day men on a motorbike attempted to kidnap her 11 year old daughter.

It might pain people to know that when they carry a Prada handbag they are supporting practices like this.

'Labour Behind the Label', part of the international 'Clean Clothes Campaign' supports garment workers' efforts worldwide to defend their rights by educating consumers, lobbying companies and governments, raising awareness, and encouraging international solidarity with workers. On Saturday morning around a dozen of them turned up outside the Prada shop in Old Bond St, mainly smartly dressed in black, to demonstrate, handing out leaflets to Prada staff, passers-by and customers.

Prada is not the only company selling high-price luxury goods to benefit from the shameful exploitation of these Turkish workers at the DESA factory in the Dzce Industrial Zone - they also make goods for Mulberry, Louis Vuitton, Samsonite, Aspinal of London, Nicole Farhi and Luella.

I don't think I've ever bought anything from any of these companies, nor am I likely to, but one of the first things I did when I got home was to send a message to all of them asking them to insist that "DESA immediately reinstates the dismissed workers with back pay to date of dismissal, halts the ongoing campaign of intimidation and harassment, implements proper industrial relations, including recognised grievance and disciplinary procedures and starts to negotiate with Deri Is as a social partner."

You can do this very easily on the Labour Start web site, at
 http://www.labourstart.org/cgi-bin/solidarityforever/show_campaign.cgi?c=446
where you can find details about the campaign and an e-mail form to send the above message (and more) to the companies involved.

It's hard to understand why so far the companies have taken no action. The increase in cost to them would be marginal given the incredibly high markup by the time the bag reaches the customer, and surely more than compensated for by being able to market their goods as ethically sourced, unlike the cheap, virtually identical fakes you can pick up for rather closer to the factory price in many markets.

Fashion victims might even begin to feel proud of having bought the genuine item rather than smug about having bought a replica at a knock-down price.

Of course it isn't just the high price designer labels that support sweatshops. On the  http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/campaigns/budget Labour Behind the Label site you can also find out about the exploitation supported by Matalan and other cheap suppliers and supermarkets.

A few more pictures on My London Diary shortly
 http://mylondondiary.co.uk/2009/mar.htm#: