Women sitting at home in the remote villages of Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, may not be aware of Inditex being one of the world’s largest fashion retail groups, having eight brands and over 6,700 stores in 88 markets.
But what these women do know is that their handwork will definitely fetch them a reasonably good amount of remuneration, all thanks to Inditex.
With the help of organizations like Pratham and ETI (Ethical Trading Initiative), Inditex is making sure that these ‘home workers’ get their proper dues as well as their welfare is also taken care of.
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The Inditex Sustainability Department told Apparel Resources, “Inditex funded a detailed study through the research department of Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, to understand the nature and extent of legal homeworking in India. This study gave us an idea about the extent of homeworking in general, though not specific to Inditex production. The aim was to understand how this process worked in order to prevent and anticipate any action should it be needed.” Inditex has taken help of garment technicians from prominent educational Institutes like National Institute of Fashion Technology.
It added that the number of home workers working for Inditex in India is “exceptional” and “not relevant”. Though most of Inditex production takes place within the audited premises of Inditex suppliers and factories, in some exceptional and specific products, where the need of homeworkers has been identified, agents/contractors are engaged by the suppliers. They then distribute the production work among the homeworkers. In such cases, these workers predominantly work from their homes, while there are centres for collection and distribution of material. At the local level, Inditex is working along with an organization, Pratham, to ensure that children (in these home working locations) are enrolled in schools and are in fact studying.
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