Child Labor in Bangladesh Garment Industry

Tonight on Exposure. Slapped. Abused. Child workers suffering attacked on the production line. Undercover for the first time, we reveal the hidden face of the Bangladesh sweatshops producing clothes for retailers from around the world. What the retailers are interested in is getting their clothes produced at the lowest possible price at the quickest possible deadline. It's not about the people inside the industry. It's just about the profit that can be made. Everyone loves a bargain. But at what cost to the people who toil to make the clothes we want to wear? A beam fell. and then the roof fell. I mean it was so dark I thought will I ever survive. As Bangladesh recovers from one of the world's deadliest industrial disasters we investigate how workers still put their lives on the line all in the name of fashion. Locking a door that's specifically there to enable people to escape down a fire escape in the midst of a fire is about as bad as it gets. The rush is on. The final week of the January sales. Shoppers on the hunt for a last-minute bargain. In the cutthroat business of high street fashion, price is king. So brands and retailers travel the globe to search for suppliers who can make their clothes at the cheapest possible cost. Tonight, we go undercover in Bangladesh, inside the country's sweatshops, to reveal the reality for people working at the sharp end. It's a world of daily violence. Verbal abuse. And constant, intense pressure to meet deadlines. The collapse of the nine-storey Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka last April. More than a thousand workers were crushed to death. Moments earlier, they'd been churning out clothes for some of the world's biggest retailers, including orders for our high streets. The disaster drew the world's attention to garment factories in poorer countries, some like deathtraps. 23-year-old Roxana Begum was a machinist on the seventh floor. I stood up when the building started collapsing and then the floor gave way. I could see a girl come running towards me. The girl then fell. A beam fell on her back and on my leg. A beam fell and then the roof fell. I mean, it was so dark, I thought, will I ever survive? The rescue effort continued long into the night. Hundreds trapped alive. I was so thirsty that I started licking people's blood. I felt my throat and my body was on fire. One boy said to me, Sister, please can you give me some water? I said, Brother, I'm in the same situation as you. How can I give you water? I'm in so much pain, brother. Then afterwards, he drank his own urine and died about two or three hours later. Next afternoon, torchlight found the face of another trapped worker. He said, with his light on, is there anyone here alive? I said, brother, I'm alive. Please save me. He could see that my hand was stuck and then he said, Sister, do you want your life or do you want your hand? I said, I don't need my hand, please save me. After speaking to a medic on the ground, fellow garment worker Didar Hussain returned to Anna with a small knife and some anaesthetic. This is where I injected into her arm and then I started cutting it and when I cut her hand she was crying so much. She was crying and I was crying. When he cut my arm I was screaming a lot and the one who was amputating he was crying too. Anna was rushed to a nearby hospital. Medics were struggling to cope. Many could not be saved. Roxana was also rescued, but like Anna, she paid a heavy price. When I regained consciousness, I could see my leg had been cut. I could see everyone near me was crying. At least 1,130 people died at Rana Plaza. Some 2,500 were injured. The scale of the catastrophe was shocking. But details then began to emerge of how large cracks had appeared in the pillars days before the disaster. 24 hours earlier, officials had ordered the building to be evacuated while checks were carried out. But owner Mohamed Sohel Rana went on television to assure everyone Rana Plaza was safe. The next day, workers from the five garment factories on the upper floors of the building were forced in. by their managers. They said to me, you sister fucker, if you don't go back inside, I'll stop your wages. Why aren't you going back in? The building didn't collapse during the night. It won't break now. He dragged me back inside. He dragged another two girls in. Those girls didn't survive. Before they died, they were screaming. The line-in chief has forced us to go back inside. He forced us. Four days after the collapse, Sohail Rana was arrested, trying to flee across the border to India. An official inquiry later revealed that the building he had insisted was safe was riddled with construction faults. Western companies had carried out checks on the factories they did business with at Rana Plaza. But neither they nor the authorities had identified the dangers. Among the dozens of labels found in the wreckage, a number of major high street names, including Primark. The low-cost fashion chain has since paid out more than a million pounds to victims and has led efforts to agree long-term compensation. 3,000 workers were forced into work that day. And over a thousand of them lost their lives. And the fact that this was predictable, everybody knew that the Bangladesh garment industry was a death trap and nobody did anything to stop those workers from being killed. The Rana Plaza collapse, the most deadly in a succession of factory disasters, has cast a threatening shadow over Bangladesh's garment industry. Many Western retailers have since signed a new safety agreement to try and ensure such a tragedy can never happen again. But months on from Rana Plaza, how much has the industry cleaned up its act? Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on earth. Dhaka is its chaotic capital and centre of the country's clothing industry. Here, labour is among the cheapest in the world and safety rules are often unenforced. Britain imported... nearly a billion and a half pounds worth of clothing from Bangladesh last year. That makes us the third biggest trader with the country, behind the United States and Germany. In the space of about 15 years, Bangladesh has gone from being a mine player in the apparel industry to being the second largest apparel producer in the world after China, exporting in excess of 13 billion pounds per year. Bangladesh now has somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 apparel factories, somewhere between three and four million workers. It's a truly massive industry that's out of control. Rana Plaza was by no means the first disaster to strike Bangladesh's garment trade. Hundreds more workers have died in fires and building collapses over the past decade. Since Rana Plaza, a new safety agreement has been backed by more than 100 retailers. Among them, some of the biggest names in the UK high street. Together, they've agreed millions of pounds for independent factory inspections and building improvements. But while efforts have begun to tackle the problems of crumbling buildings and lack of fire exits, we wanted to find out what conditions are like for the workers now. So, in Dhaka, I was introduced to two of the city's garment workers. Hello. Hi. Hi. I'm so glad to meet you. It's very good to meet you. These two women have bravely agreed to wear hidden cameras to investigate what's going on behind the walls of the country's sweatshops. The garment trade here is notoriously secretive. Workers daring to stand up for their rights have in the past been beaten and even murdered. Why don't we go somewhere quiet where we can talk properly? Yes. OK, let's go. We're concealing... Both are investigators' identities. We've given them the names Labani and Lotta. So, first of all, how long have you worked in the garment trade? Six years. Six years. How did you feel when you saw the pictures of the factory collapse at Rana Plaza? Looking at all the images... of Rana Plaza made me feel really bad. I thought it could have happened to us. We could have died. Our lives are not safe. What made you decide to take a risk and wear a secret camera? Because it is a risk for you. It's really important people know what we are going through, because they don't know what we do. They only see that we make clothes. They don't know about the working conditions in this country, how we do our work, how much we suffer. We're doing this to let the world know. And why are you doing it? For the same reasons. It's 7pm. Garment workers pour out of the backstreet sweatshops in Mirpur, an industrial hub of Dhaka, after a ten-hour shift. But the day is far from over for some on the production line. At the O'Leara fashions factory, our investigator Lotta is busy with other workers trying to finish a big order of jeans for a European buyer. Under increasing pressure to hit the delivery deadline. workers are under strict orders not to chat and to pay attention. Habib's in charge of one of the production lines. Minutes after slapping one girl, he reduces another standing next to Lotta to tears. The girl, we'd been told, was just 14 years old. We'd just witnessed violent abuse of children on the production line. Our investigator Lotta started work at O'Lear of Fashions after we received reports about the way workers were being treated. She obtained a job earning the equivalent of just £30 basic pay a month. The factory produces jeans for customers across the world, including ones bearing the label of a major UK brand. Look at this. These are Leekopar jeans from London. Ladies. Lee Cooper is an iconic name in British fashion. The firm was founded more than a hundred years ago and kitted out our armed forces during two world wars. Recently, Lee Cooper has been transformed into a global licensing operation. It sold the rights to produce its brand in more than 40 countries. Lee Cooper from London. Lee Cooper labels were reported to have been recovered from the ruins of Rana Plaza. But the brand never publicly confirmed or denied at the time whether its goods had been made inside the building. Now we'd found jeans bearing a Lee Cooper logo at O'Leara Fashions. Piles of them stacked in the storeroom. At the factory, workers are under the constant threat of violent and verbal attack. But you are not 18 years old. How old are you? 14? I am 14 years old. How old are you? I am 14 years old. You are not 18 years old. You are not 18 years old. How long have you been working here? One year. One year? No, no, no. I have been working here for 10 months. How old are you? I am 12 or 13. 12 or 13. How long have you been working here? One month. How old are you? 14 years old. 14 years old? Yes. You have worked so hard with us for so long. No, I have not. I have worked hard. Supervisor Ridoy, wearing the striped t-shirt on the right, is doing his morning rounds. He has his eye on one of the child workers our investigator Lotta has just been speaking to. He thinks she isn't working hard enough and threatens her with a used up fabric roll. Just when the girl thinks she's escaped with a warning, Ridoy returns and strikes her on the back with the fabric roll. Oh! I don't think anyone can watch footage of such young girls being slapped and shouted at and abused in the way that those girls have been treated and not be appalled and shocked by what they're seeing. There's a belief, I think, that child labour has been largely eliminated now, but we know in Bangladesh, very, very young girls being employed in the supply chains and being treated and abused in such a horrendous way. CHILDREN CHIRP The lunchtime bell comes as a welcome relief for workers at O'Leary. But not only does production stop, the power for the lights and the fans is also switched off. Under Bangladesh labour laws, anyone under the age of 18 is banned from working in a factory for more than five hours a day. But at O'Leary, we found children working shifts of 11 hours or more. And as Lotta discovered, all the workers have to meet tough production targets. It's been 3 hours since Rani did the trish-bish. Why? We did it for an hour. You didn't do it for so long. Why didn't we do it? We didn't do it. We didn't do it because we didn't have the money. At the end of her shift, Lata meets our backup team to report on what she'd seen at the factory so far. About 40 children are aged between 11 and 15. Their family situation is really bad, which is why they work in the garment factories. The children said that after they meet their targets, they immediately have to do more work. They don't give them any time to go to the toilet. If they make one mistake, they get slapped, kicked, or they get fired. Following the Rana Plaza collapse, workers took to the streets. Pressure built on Western retailers to help improve conditions in the sweatshops producing clothes for us. The safety plan, backed by many UK companies, got underway last November, with an inspection programme which will cover more than 1,500 garment factories. But exposure has learnt that before Rana Plaza, many major brands were repeatedly warned about the dangers of the industry in Bangladesh. A fire at the That's It sportswear plant in Dhaka three years ago. 29 people lost their lives. Just the latest in a series of fatal fires and factory collapses. Four months after, in April 2011, government officials, worker rights groups and retailers met in Dhaka to talk about a safety plan for the Bangladesh garment trade. The meeting focused on... proposal that we and other groups had put forward for a binding and forcible agreement between brands and retailers and worker representatives under which brands and retailers would require their factories to undertake the building renovations and retrofitting necessary to turn these death traps into safe factories and under which the brands and retailers would have to help pay the costs. But the retailers at the meeting said it would cost too much. The deal failed. Two companies, one from the US and one from Germany, did later sign the agreement. But no one from Britain followed suit. The death toll in Bangladesh's garment factories continued to rise. In November 2012, at least 112 people were killed during a fire at the Tazreen fashions factory. Survivors said many workers hadn't been able to escape because there weren't enough fire exits and managers had ordered them back to their posts. among the carnage, clothes and labels for major retailers around the world, including Britain. We were bitterly disappointed by the unwillingness of the brands and retailers to make commitments to address the safety issues, because if the brands and retailers have been willing at that time to commit to take the steps necessary to address the grievous safety hazards in these factories, it's quite possible, indeed I would argue likely, that the Tazerine Fashions fire and the Rana Plaza building collapse and all the deaths associated with them could have been prevented. Coming up, a factory where workers are still in danger. Locked fire door. Two padlocks. That's a year after Tazrin Fashions and they're still locking exit doors. That's insane. Bangladesh is still reeling from the fallout of the deaths of more than 1,100 workers at Rana Plaza. Many companies, including some of the UK's biggest retailers, recently launched a safety programme to help modernise the garment factories they place orders with. During our investigation, we'd so far found child workers being violently abused on the production line and just how far the industry has to go to clean up its act. Vaz Apparels is in the heart of Dhaka, in a building above restaurants and a shopping bazaar. Our second undercover investigator, Laboni, got a job there as a helper, earning just £6 a week. The worst thing is when I sit down to work. Every day I have to cut threads from 500 to 600 collars. When I go home after cutting threads, these four fingers are in pain and hurt a lot. Vaz Apparels, along with its sister factory, Basic Shirts, boasts it's produced clothes for a host of big-name UK retailers. When Labani began work at Vaz, she found shirts inside the factory bearing the name of a major high street chain. BHS is part of fashion mogul Sir Philip Green's Arcadia group of companies, which includes other household names like Miss Selfridge and Topshop. Last year, Arcadia posted pre-tax profits of more than £480 million. In Bangladesh, one of BHS's suppliers has a contract with Vaz Apparel's sister factory, Basic Shirts, to produce clothing for its stores in the UK. But Vaz Apparel's is not part of that deal. This morning, our investigator at Vaz has been summoned to a meeting with other workers on the shop floor. The factory's production manager announces auditors from a major customer are due to arrive any day. She tells them what to say if the inspectors ask them any questions. There are five people in this village. What is the system of politics? You all know the details. When will you go to the temple? At 2 o'clock. Do you go at the earliest? No. At 5 o'clock you go. The the The production manager instructs workers to make false statements in front of the buyers. Do you work later than 7 o'clock? No. All of us stand like robots and reply together. Yes, no, yes, no. But I myself work three days till 8pm. According to Arcadia's code of conduct, workers at their supplier factories should receive regular and recorded health and safety training. But despite the factory storing BHS shirts and being owned by one of the retailer's authorized contractors, vase apparels is not covered by Arcadia's rulebook. During one shift at Vaz, a factory official orders workers to sign a register to record they'd completed certain training courses. But Labani is told this system is also being abused. Is she a duck? These inspection programs carried out by the brands and retailers are really the last line of defense for worker rights and worker safety. And what you're seeing with the coaching of workers as witnesses, with the falsification of safety training records, is the corruption of that inspection process. And that bodes very poorly for the safety of workers going forward. At VAS Apparels, Labani discovered a string of concerns about safety and labour conditions. Toilets often with no water. And staff forced to keep a cubicle door closed by holding onto a rope. I don't want to draw a linch. But worse was to come. It's approaching 8pm and Labani is... She's working a late shift. She goes to fetch some water from the drinks dispenser on her floor. When she gets there, she finds the fire exit nearby is padlocked. The next morning, Labani arrives for her shift with other workers. The same fire exit is still padlocked. When 112 people died at the Tazreen Fashions fire just over a year ago, many burned alive because there weren't enough exits. The locked fire door at the Vasa Parals factory shows vital safety lessons are still ignored. We showed our footage to Scott Nova. A locked fire door. Two padlocks. As well as heading an international labour rights organisation, Nova is on several working groups overseeing the new factory safety plan for Bangladesh. That's a year after Tazrin Fashtans and they're still locking exit doors. That's insane. I mean, the only thing standing between these workers and most people in the factory dying in a fire is luck. Locking a door that's specifically there to enable people to escape down a fire escape in the midst of a fire is about as bad as it gets. During our investigation, Labanie showed me clothes and labels she'd obtained from the Vaz Apparel's factory. This is a 14-year-old shirt. Yes. It's my uniform. So you wear this as a uniform? Yes. So it's BHS, age 14, made in Bangladesh. The kind of thing that in the UK would sell for under £20. Back in Britain, we were able to buy shirts with a matching label from a BHS store in London's Oxford Street. They're actually part of the chain's school wear range and sell for just £12 a pair. We alerted the Arcadia Group to the fact we'd found BHS shirts in the Vase Apparel's factory and told them of the conditions we found there. They told us... We have carried out a full investigation with our supplier. the Fielding Group Limited, who have categorically confirmed to us that no BHS goods have been made at VAR's apparels. It has been made known to us... that the owner of Vars Apparels operates other factories in Bangladesh and some goods for BHS were stored in the factory concerned. Our group operates in over 40 countries and arranges inspections of hundreds of factories each year. We take our responsibilities seriously in all the countries our suppliers source from. Vars Apparels told us that although they have the same owners as its sister factory, Basic Shirts, They had separate factory management and separate compliance records. They said many of their staff are long-serving employees who enjoy their working environment. The company said it provides rejected items as uniforms to staff at both factories free of charge. It said on occasions, BHS shirts have been brought from Basic Shirts to VAS for presentations and buyers' meetings. VAS added that they care about their staff. and exceed their lawful obligations in terms of carrying out ethical compliance audits to ensure workers' welfare and health and safety. But BHS wasn't the only label we found at VAS Apparels. And what else do you have? A living. South Bay. South Bay, UK, US, made in Bangladesh, J.D. Williams & Company. Made in this factory? Yes. The South Bay label our investigators showed me is exclusive to J.D. Williams & Company. Last year, the Manchester-based firm generated almost £800 million in turnover from its high street and home shopping brands such as Giacomo and High & Mighty. Like BHS, J.D. Williams has a production contract in Bangladesh with basic shirts and not with Vaz apparels. But when we were at Vaz, workers were busy completing an order of South Bay shirts for the UK. We were able to match South Bay labels from the factory with shirts we bought from J.D. Williams outlets in the UK. Premier Man and Giacomo. In a statement, N Brown Group, which owns J.D. Williams, told Exposure it was a caring, ethical company, which strongly believes anyone making its clothes has the right to a fair wage and decent, safe working conditions. It said the conditions we'd found at VAS are illegal and morally reprehensible, and added it was shocked and disappointed. that some of their shirts had been sourced from the factory. The company said it would work hard to improve conditions in Bangladesh and will never knowingly buy from factories which don't meet their own high standards and those laid down by the Ethical Trading Initiative. N. Brown also told us it had sacked its supplier Basic Shirts and find its agent and would donate the money to a Rana Plaza victims fund. Since the Rana Plaza disaster, the authorities in Bangladesh have carried out checks on many of the country's garment factories. This footage, shot just a week before last April's collapse, shows huge cracks in the floors and walls of another factory, making knitwear for a major British retailer. The building on the outskirts of Dhaka. was shut down last August and is one of a number closed in recent months for safety reasons. One of the surveys that was done by Bangladesh University estimates that around 90% of the factories in Bangladesh have got safety issues. That's substandard building materials or illegal floors or not enough fire exits. I think that really showed to the world the scale of the problem in Bangladesh and how much needed to be done. Dhaka's morning rush hour. At the O'Leara fashions factory, our investigator Lotta has begun her shift. She's thirsty and hands a bottle to one of the children to fill it up with water. But Habib, who's running the production line, isn't impressed. Moments later, he yells at the same girl for failing to cut all the loose thread from a pair of jeans. And Habib is not finished yet. He kicks the girl on the back of her leg. Under Bangladesh's labour laws, factories aren't allowed to employ adult workers for more than 60 hours a week. But at O'Leara Fashions, our investigator Lotta had not had a day off and had worked... 89 hours in the past seven days alone. Now some of the staff have been told they have to do night shifts to finish a large order. How much is it? I don't know. I was a little bit naked in Shigiri. We meet Lotta at the end of her gruelling 13-hour shift. It's 10.30 at night. The children can't work for such a long time. It's really hard for them. Sometimes they cry, sometimes they get headaches. They feel really hungry, but if they cry they won't be allowed to go. They say, you have to do it. Why did you come then if you can't do the work? The children can't cope with all this. They can't take the stress. The pressure is on at Alira Fashions to meet the delivery deadline. The Alira Fashions factory says it's completed orders for a host of customers from Europe and the US. Our investigator Lotta has seen children there being subjected to physical and verbal abuse. She's worked 89 hours in a week. This morning, with some staff on the verge of exhaustion, a factory manager calls them into his office. A customer from Europe is demanding an order dispatched by tomorrow night. I don't know how they will give it to us. They will give it to us tomorrow at 8. What is the possibility? We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do with the people. We don't know what to do. We have to go here. They have taken the buttons. What do you want? Do you want to see the goods? This is your house. This is your house. This is your house. What will you do? I don't know. The pressure that brands and retailers place on their contract factories creates perverse incentives that produce dangerous and abusive behavior by factory managers. We're terrified that if they let delivery deadlines slip by a day, they'll lose the business of the customers. With workers at Alira under increasing pressure, Supervisor Ridoy is back on the warpath. This time, he targets another child worker for not standing up straight. First, he punches her on the ear. Our hidden cameras revealed the reality of life at Ollira Fashions for the children and the other workers. But what sort of image does the factory present to its customers from Britain and other countries? To find out, we visited the factory, posing as buyers. I am here to see Mr. Nasir. We met merchandising manager Nasir Udin. He was quick to boast about an order he claimed Alira had just completed for one particular brand. We have shipped denim items. Burka, Straight Zins, and you know, Lee Cooper Band. Lee Cooper, to the UK? To the UK, Lee Cooper. How much of a business contact do you have with Lee Cooper? Yeah, Lee Cooper Band, we have already shipped more or less. Next, we asked about working hours at the factory. Our investigator, Lotta, had clocked up 89 hours in one week, working as late as 10pm. But Udin told us a very different story. How many hours a week do your workers work? Eight hours. Eight hours, maximum? Eight hours and something. Sometimes we wait overtime three hours up to 8pm. 8pm? It depends on the shipment schedule. Right, so normally they work eight hours, but if you have a rush order, then they might work a bit later. Is that right? But never beyond eight? That's the latest. No, no, no. No work. That's fine, that's fine. During our visit, we were taken on a tour of the factory. I'm Turkey. I have jean shorts, denim jeans. We could see for ourselves the number of young workers on the shop floor. Many, we'd been told, were barely in their teens. We asked Udin about the ages of some of the staff. Just one other thing. Obviously, the workers, some of them look quite young. How old are they, some of the younger ones? Minimum 18 years. But everyone's 17. Some of them look a little bit younger than some. Size little, but they're not the best. So they're definitely 18 plus, not younger. We later asked O'Leara Fashions about the conditions we'd found at the factory. They told us they don't use child labour, but that another factory in the same building was employing some children at the time of our investigation. As for the two supervisors... Ridoy and Habib, who we filmed assaulting young workers, Alira claimed they were also employed by the other factory, which they said had now closed. Alira concluded it was continuing to operate strictly under the Bangladesh Labour Act. After returning to Britain, we approached Lee Cooper to make them aware of conditions at Alera Fashions. We also wanted to ask them about the jeans we'd found at the factory with Lee Cooper labels. Although Lee Cooper still has offices in this building in London, London. The brand is now owned by Red Diamond Holdings in Luxembourg. Lee Cooper declined to be interviewed for this programme. Company executives also rejected an offer to view our footage. In a brief... statement they said we employ a strict set of rules to ensure that all our licensees source responsibly and can confirm this product was either counterfeit or unauthorized. They said we'll take all steps to eliminate the unlawful production of Lee Cooper branded products. We also asked Alira Fashions about the order of Lee Cooper jeans the factory told us it had completed. They said the jeans had been shipped to a another British clothing company whose name has been given to exposure after the order was subcontracted to Alira by another factory. We've since passed this information to Lee Cooper. During our investigation, we gathered evidence of violence against children, locked fire exits and crumbling buildings in factories making cheap clothes for the fashion industry. Big changes are required before we can fully trust that the clothes we buy with a Made in Bangladesh label are produced in safe and humane conditions. The safety agreement signed by many major retailers is a step in the right direction, but less than half of the factories are currently included. Since the Rana Plaza tragedy, at least 15 more workers have been killed in factory fires. It's very discouraging and cause for deep concern that many months after these disasters, we are still seeing factories that are locking fire doors. We are still seeing the kinds of abuses of workers that are visible. in your footage. The industry in Bangladesh has to be cleaned up. There is finally some real pressure on the brands and retailers to do that and some commitments that they've made toward doing that. But we obviously have an extremely long way to go. Western retailers, factory owners and the Bangladeshi government still face the massive task of making this trade safe. And the victims of Rana Plaza continue to suffer for the years of neglect. I have to work in this helpless type of situation. Walking and just moving around is very painful. I wish I could go to places, but I can't walk, so I can't go anywhere. When I see people walking, it's very hard for me. It's painful because I think about how independent I was before and how I am now. Why has God punished me so much? I've never hurt anyone in my life.

Tonight on Exposure. Slapped. Abused.

Child workers suffering attacked on the production line. Undercover for the first time, we reveal the hidden face of the Bangladesh sweatshops producing clothes for retailers from around the world. What the retailers are interested in is getting their clothes produced at the lowest possible price at the quickest possible deadline.

It's not about the people inside the industry. It's just about the profit that can be made. Everyone loves a bargain.

But at what cost to the people who toil to make the clothes we want to wear? A beam fell. and then the roof fell.

I mean it was so dark I thought will I ever survive. As Bangladesh recovers from one of the world's deadliest industrial disasters we investigate how workers still put their lives on the line all in the name of fashion. Locking a door that's specifically there to enable people to escape down a fire escape in the midst of a fire is about as bad as it gets.

The rush is on. The final week of the January sales. Shoppers on the hunt for a last-minute bargain.

In the cutthroat business of high street fashion, price is king. So brands and retailers travel the globe to search for suppliers who can make their clothes at the cheapest possible cost. Tonight, we go undercover in Bangladesh, inside the country's sweatshops, to reveal the reality for people working at the sharp end.

It's a world of daily violence. Verbal abuse. And constant, intense pressure to meet deadlines.

The collapse of the nine-storey Rana Plaza building on the outskirts of the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka last April. More than a thousand workers were crushed to death. Moments earlier, they'd been churning out clothes for some of the world's biggest retailers, including orders for our high streets.

The disaster drew the world's attention to garment factories in poorer countries, some like deathtraps. 23-year-old Roxana Begum was a machinist on the seventh floor. I stood up when the building started collapsing and then the floor gave way. I could see a girl come running towards me. The girl then fell.

A beam fell on her back and on my leg. A beam fell and then the roof fell. I mean, it was so dark, I thought, will I ever survive? The rescue effort continued long into the night. Hundreds trapped alive.

I was so thirsty that I started licking people's blood. I felt my throat and my body was on fire. One boy said to me, Sister, please can you give me some water? I said, Brother, I'm in the same situation as you.

How can I give you water? I'm in so much pain, brother. Then afterwards, he drank his own urine and died about two or three hours later.

Next afternoon, torchlight found the face of another trapped worker. He said, with his light on, is there anyone here alive? I said, brother, I'm alive. Please save me. He could see that my hand was stuck and then he said, Sister, do you want your life or do you want your hand?

I said, I don't need my hand, please save me. After speaking to a medic on the ground, fellow garment worker Didar Hussain returned to Anna with a small knife and some anaesthetic. This is where I injected into her arm and then I started cutting it and when I cut her hand she was crying so much. She was crying and I was crying.

When he cut my arm I was screaming a lot and the one who was amputating he was crying too. Anna was rushed to a nearby hospital. Medics were struggling to cope.

Many could not be saved. Roxana was also rescued, but like Anna, she paid a heavy price. When I regained consciousness, I could see my leg had been cut. I could see everyone near me was crying.

At least 1,130 people died at Rana Plaza. Some 2,500 were injured. The scale of the catastrophe was shocking. But details then began to emerge of how large cracks had appeared in the pillars days before the disaster. 24 hours earlier, officials had ordered the building to be evacuated while checks were carried out.

But owner Mohamed Sohel Rana went on television to assure everyone Rana Plaza was safe. The next day, workers from the five garment factories on the upper floors of the building were forced in. by their managers. They said to me, you sister fucker, if you don't go back inside, I'll stop your wages. Why aren't you going back in?

The building didn't collapse during the night. It won't break now. He dragged me back inside.

He dragged another two girls in. Those girls didn't survive. Before they died, they were screaming.

The line-in chief has forced us to go back inside. He forced us. Four days after the collapse, Sohail Rana was arrested, trying to flee across the border to India. An official inquiry later revealed that the building he had insisted was safe was riddled with construction faults. Western companies had carried out checks on the factories they did business with at Rana Plaza.

But neither they nor the authorities had identified the dangers. Among the dozens of labels found in the wreckage, a number of major high street names, including Primark. The low-cost fashion chain has since paid out more than a million pounds to victims and has led efforts to agree long-term compensation. 3,000 workers were forced into work that day. And over a thousand of them lost their lives.

And the fact that this was predictable, everybody knew that the Bangladesh garment industry was a death trap and nobody did anything to stop those workers from being killed. The Rana Plaza collapse, the most deadly in a succession of factory disasters, has cast a threatening shadow over Bangladesh's garment industry. Many Western retailers have since signed a new safety agreement to try and ensure such a tragedy can never happen again. But months on from Rana Plaza, how much has the industry cleaned up its act?

Bangladesh is one of the poorest nations on earth. Dhaka is its chaotic capital and centre of the country's clothing industry. Here, labour is among the cheapest in the world and safety rules are often unenforced. Britain imported...

nearly a billion and a half pounds worth of clothing from Bangladesh last year. That makes us the third biggest trader with the country, behind the United States and Germany. In the space of about 15 years, Bangladesh has gone from being a mine player in the apparel industry to being the second largest apparel producer in the world after China, exporting in excess of 13 billion pounds per year. Bangladesh now has somewhere between 3,500 and 4,000 apparel factories, somewhere between three and four million workers.

It's a truly massive industry that's out of control. Rana Plaza was by no means the first disaster to strike Bangladesh's garment trade. Hundreds more workers have died in fires and building collapses over the past decade. Since Rana Plaza, a new safety agreement has been backed by more than 100 retailers. Among them, some of the biggest names in the UK high street.

Together, they've agreed millions of pounds for independent factory inspections and building improvements. But while efforts have begun to tackle the problems of crumbling buildings and lack of fire exits, we wanted to find out what conditions are like for the workers now. So, in Dhaka, I was introduced to two of the city's garment workers. Hello.

Hi. Hi. I'm so glad to meet you. It's very good to meet you.

These two women have bravely agreed to wear hidden cameras to investigate what's going on behind the walls of the country's sweatshops. The garment trade here is notoriously secretive. Workers daring to stand up for their rights have in the past been beaten and even murdered. Why don't we go somewhere quiet where we can talk properly?

Yes. OK, let's go. We're concealing... Both are investigators' identities.

We've given them the names Labani and Lotta. So, first of all, how long have you worked in the garment trade? Six years. Six years. How did you feel when you saw the pictures of the factory collapse at Rana Plaza?

Looking at all the images... of Rana Plaza made me feel really bad. I thought it could have happened to us. We could have died. Our lives are not safe.

What made you decide to take a risk and wear a secret camera? Because it is a risk for you. It's really important people know what we are going through, because they don't know what we do. They only see that we make clothes.

They don't know about the working conditions in this country, how we do our work, how much we suffer. We're doing this to let the world know. And why are you doing it? For the same reasons. It's 7pm.

Garment workers pour out of the backstreet sweatshops in Mirpur, an industrial hub of Dhaka, after a ten-hour shift. But the day is far from over for some on the production line. At the O'Leara fashions factory, our investigator Lotta is busy with other workers trying to finish a big order of jeans for a European buyer.

Under increasing pressure to hit the delivery deadline. workers are under strict orders not to chat and to pay attention. Habib's in charge of one of the production lines. Minutes after slapping one girl, he reduces another standing next to Lotta to tears.

The girl, we'd been told, was just 14 years old. We'd just witnessed violent abuse of children on the production line. Our investigator Lotta started work at O'Lear of Fashions after we received reports about the way workers were being treated. She obtained a job earning the equivalent of just £30 basic pay a month. The factory produces jeans for customers across the world, including ones bearing the label of a major UK brand.

Look at this. These are Leekopar jeans from London. Ladies. Lee Cooper is an iconic name in British fashion.

The firm was founded more than a hundred years ago and kitted out our armed forces during two world wars. Recently, Lee Cooper has been transformed into a global licensing operation. It sold the rights to produce its brand in more than 40 countries. Lee Cooper from London. Lee Cooper labels were reported to have been recovered from the ruins of Rana Plaza.

But the brand never publicly confirmed or denied at the time whether its goods had been made inside the building. Now we'd found jeans bearing a Lee Cooper logo at O'Leara Fashions. Piles of them stacked in the storeroom.

At the factory, workers are under the constant threat of violent and verbal attack. But you are not 18 years old. How old are you? 14?

I am 14 years old. How old are you? I am 14 years old.

You are not 18 years old. You are not 18 years old. How long have you been working here? One year.

One year? No, no, no. I have been working here for 10 months.

How old are you? I am 12 or 13. 12 or 13. How long have you been working here? One month. How old are you?

14 years old. 14 years old? Yes. You have worked so hard with us for so long. No, I have not.

I have worked hard. Supervisor Ridoy, wearing the striped t-shirt on the right, is doing his morning rounds. He has his eye on one of the child workers our investigator Lotta has just been speaking to. He thinks she isn't working hard enough and threatens her with a used up fabric roll. Just when the girl thinks she's escaped with a warning, Ridoy returns and strikes her on the back with the fabric roll.

Oh! I don't think anyone can watch footage of such young girls being slapped and shouted at and abused in the way that those girls have been treated and not be appalled and shocked by what they're seeing. There's a belief, I think, that child labour has been largely eliminated now, but we know in Bangladesh, very, very young girls being employed in the supply chains and being treated and abused in such a horrendous way.

CHILDREN CHIRP The lunchtime bell comes as a welcome relief for workers at O'Leary. But not only does production stop, the power for the lights and the fans is also switched off. Under Bangladesh labour laws, anyone under the age of 18 is banned from working in a factory for more than five hours a day.

But at O'Leary, we found children working shifts of 11 hours or more. And as Lotta discovered, all the workers have to meet tough production targets. It's been 3 hours since Rani did the trish-bish. Why?

We did it for an hour. You didn't do it for so long. Why didn't we do it?

We didn't do it. We didn't do it because we didn't have the money. At the end of her shift, Lata meets our backup team to report on what she'd seen at the factory so far.

About 40 children are aged between 11 and 15. Their family situation is really bad, which is why they work in the garment factories. The children said that after they meet their targets, they immediately have to do more work. They don't give them any time to go to the toilet.

If they make one mistake, they get slapped, kicked, or they get fired. Following the Rana Plaza collapse, workers took to the streets. Pressure built on Western retailers to help improve conditions in the sweatshops producing clothes for us.

The safety plan, backed by many UK companies, got underway last November, with an inspection programme which will cover more than 1,500 garment factories. But exposure has learnt that before Rana Plaza, many major brands were repeatedly warned about the dangers of the industry in Bangladesh. A fire at the That's It sportswear plant in Dhaka three years ago. 29 people lost their lives.

Just the latest in a series of fatal fires and factory collapses. Four months after, in April 2011, government officials, worker rights groups and retailers met in Dhaka to talk about a safety plan for the Bangladesh garment trade. The meeting focused on... proposal that we and other groups had put forward for a binding and forcible agreement between brands and retailers and worker representatives under which brands and retailers would require their factories to undertake the building renovations and retrofitting necessary to turn these death traps into safe factories and under which the brands and retailers would have to help pay the costs. But the retailers at the meeting said it would cost too much.

The deal failed. Two companies, one from the US and one from Germany, did later sign the agreement. But no one from Britain followed suit. The death toll in Bangladesh's garment factories continued to rise.

In November 2012, at least 112 people were killed during a fire at the Tazreen fashions factory. Survivors said many workers hadn't been able to escape because there weren't enough fire exits and managers had ordered them back to their posts. among the carnage, clothes and labels for major retailers around the world, including Britain. We were bitterly disappointed by the unwillingness of the brands and retailers to make commitments to address the safety issues, because if the brands and retailers have been willing at that time to commit to take the steps necessary to address the grievous safety hazards in these factories, it's quite possible, indeed I would argue likely, that the Tazerine Fashions fire and the Rana Plaza building collapse and all the deaths associated with them could have been prevented. Coming up, a factory where workers are still in danger.

Locked fire door. Two padlocks. That's a year after Tazrin Fashions and they're still locking exit doors. That's insane.

Bangladesh is still reeling from the fallout of the deaths of more than 1,100 workers at Rana Plaza. Many companies, including some of the UK's biggest retailers, recently launched a safety programme to help modernise the garment factories they place orders with. During our investigation, we'd so far found child workers being violently abused on the production line and just how far the industry has to go to clean up its act. Vaz Apparels is in the heart of Dhaka, in a building above restaurants and a shopping bazaar. Our second undercover investigator, Laboni, got a job there as a helper, earning just £6 a week.

The worst thing is when I sit down to work. Every day I have to cut threads from 500 to 600 collars. When I go home after cutting threads, these four fingers are in pain and hurt a lot.

Vaz Apparels, along with its sister factory, Basic Shirts, boasts it's produced clothes for a host of big-name UK retailers. When Labani began work at Vaz, she found shirts inside the factory bearing the name of a major high street chain. BHS is part of fashion mogul Sir Philip Green's Arcadia group of companies, which includes other household names like Miss Selfridge and Topshop.

Last year, Arcadia posted pre-tax profits of more than £480 million. In Bangladesh, one of BHS's suppliers has a contract with Vaz Apparel's sister factory, Basic Shirts, to produce clothing for its stores in the UK. But Vaz Apparel's is not part of that deal. This morning, our investigator at Vaz has been summoned to a meeting with other workers on the shop floor.

The factory's production manager announces auditors from a major customer are due to arrive any day. She tells them what to say if the inspectors ask them any questions. There are five people in this village. What is the system of politics?

You all know the details. When will you go to the temple? At 2 o'clock.

Do you go at the earliest? No. At 5 o'clock you go. The the The production manager instructs workers to make false statements in front of the buyers. Do you work later than 7 o'clock?

No. All of us stand like robots and reply together. Yes, no, yes, no. But I myself work three days till 8pm.

According to Arcadia's code of conduct, workers at their supplier factories should receive regular and recorded health and safety training. But despite the factory storing BHS shirts and being owned by one of the retailer's authorized contractors, vase apparels is not covered by Arcadia's rulebook. During one shift at Vaz, a factory official orders workers to sign a register to record they'd completed certain training courses. But Labani is told this system is also being abused. Is she a duck?

These inspection programs carried out by the brands and retailers are really the last line of defense for worker rights and worker safety. And what you're seeing with the coaching of workers as witnesses, with the falsification of safety training records, is the corruption of that inspection process. And that bodes very poorly for the safety of workers going forward.

At VAS Apparels, Labani discovered a string of concerns about safety and labour conditions. Toilets often with no water. And staff forced to keep a cubicle door closed by holding onto a rope.

I don't want to draw a linch. But worse was to come. It's approaching 8pm and Labani is...

She's working a late shift. She goes to fetch some water from the drinks dispenser on her floor. When she gets there, she finds the fire exit nearby is padlocked.

The next morning, Labani arrives for her shift with other workers. The same fire exit is still padlocked. When 112 people died at the Tazreen Fashions fire just over a year ago, many burned alive because there weren't enough exits. The locked fire door at the Vasa Parals factory shows vital safety lessons are still ignored.

We showed our footage to Scott Nova. A locked fire door. Two padlocks.

As well as heading an international labour rights organisation, Nova is on several working groups overseeing the new factory safety plan for Bangladesh. That's a year after Tazrin Fashtans and they're still locking exit doors. That's insane.

I mean, the only thing standing between these workers and most people in the factory dying in a fire is luck. Locking a door that's specifically there to enable people to escape down a fire escape in the midst of a fire is about as bad as it gets. During our investigation, Labanie showed me clothes and labels she'd obtained from the Vaz Apparel's factory.

This is a 14-year-old shirt. Yes. It's my uniform.

So you wear this as a uniform? Yes. So it's BHS, age 14, made in Bangladesh.

The kind of thing that in the UK would sell for under £20. Back in Britain, we were able to buy shirts with a matching label from a BHS store in London's Oxford Street. They're actually part of the chain's school wear range and sell for just £12 a pair. We alerted the Arcadia Group to the fact we'd found BHS shirts in the Vase Apparel's factory and told them of the conditions we found there. They told us...

We have carried out a full investigation with our supplier. the Fielding Group Limited, who have categorically confirmed to us that no BHS goods have been made at VAR's apparels. It has been made known to us...

that the owner of Vars Apparels operates other factories in Bangladesh and some goods for BHS were stored in the factory concerned. Our group operates in over 40 countries and arranges inspections of hundreds of factories each year. We take our responsibilities seriously in all the countries our suppliers source from.

Vars Apparels told us that although they have the same owners as its sister factory, Basic Shirts, They had separate factory management and separate compliance records. They said many of their staff are long-serving employees who enjoy their working environment. The company said it provides rejected items as uniforms to staff at both factories free of charge. It said on occasions, BHS shirts have been brought from Basic Shirts to VAS for presentations and buyers' meetings.

VAS added that they care about their staff. and exceed their lawful obligations in terms of carrying out ethical compliance audits to ensure workers' welfare and health and safety. But BHS wasn't the only label we found at VAS Apparels.

And what else do you have? A living. South Bay. South Bay, UK, US, made in Bangladesh, J.D. Williams & Company. Made in this factory?

Yes. The South Bay label our investigators showed me is exclusive to J.D. Williams & Company. Last year, the Manchester-based firm generated almost £800 million in turnover from its high street and home shopping brands such as Giacomo and High & Mighty.

Like BHS, J.D. Williams has a production contract in Bangladesh with basic shirts and not with Vaz apparels. But when we were at Vaz, workers were busy completing an order of South Bay shirts for the UK. We were able to match South Bay labels from the factory with shirts we bought from J.D.

Williams outlets in the UK. Premier Man and Giacomo. In a statement, N Brown Group, which owns J.D.

Williams, told Exposure it was a caring, ethical company, which strongly believes anyone making its clothes has the right to a fair wage and decent, safe working conditions. It said the conditions we'd found at VAS are illegal and morally reprehensible, and added it was shocked and disappointed. that some of their shirts had been sourced from the factory. The company said it would work hard to improve conditions in Bangladesh and will never knowingly buy from factories which don't meet their own high standards and those laid down by the Ethical Trading Initiative. N. Brown also told us it had sacked its supplier Basic Shirts and find its agent and would donate the money to a Rana Plaza victims fund.

Since the Rana Plaza disaster, the authorities in Bangladesh have carried out checks on many of the country's garment factories. This footage, shot just a week before last April's collapse, shows huge cracks in the floors and walls of another factory, making knitwear for a major British retailer. The building on the outskirts of Dhaka. was shut down last August and is one of a number closed in recent months for safety reasons. One of the surveys that was done by Bangladesh University estimates that around 90% of the factories in Bangladesh have got safety issues.

That's substandard building materials or illegal floors or not enough fire exits. I think that really showed to the world the scale of the problem in Bangladesh and how much needed to be done. Dhaka's morning rush hour. At the O'Leara fashions factory, our investigator Lotta has begun her shift.

She's thirsty and hands a bottle to one of the children to fill it up with water. But Habib, who's running the production line, isn't impressed. Moments later, he yells at the same girl for failing to cut all the loose thread from a pair of jeans.

And Habib is not finished yet. He kicks the girl on the back of her leg. Under Bangladesh's labour laws, factories aren't allowed to employ adult workers for more than 60 hours a week. But at O'Leara Fashions, our investigator Lotta had not had a day off and had worked...

89 hours in the past seven days alone. Now some of the staff have been told they have to do night shifts to finish a large order. How much is it?

I don't know. I was a little bit naked in Shigiri. We meet Lotta at the end of her gruelling 13-hour shift. It's 10.30 at night. The children can't work for such a long time.

It's really hard for them. Sometimes they cry, sometimes they get headaches. They feel really hungry, but if they cry they won't be allowed to go.

They say, you have to do it. Why did you come then if you can't do the work? The children can't cope with all this.

They can't take the stress. The pressure is on at Alira Fashions to meet the delivery deadline. The Alira Fashions factory says it's completed orders for a host of customers from Europe and the US.

Our investigator Lotta has seen children there being subjected to physical and verbal abuse. She's worked 89 hours in a week. This morning, with some staff on the verge of exhaustion, a factory manager calls them into his office.

A customer from Europe is demanding an order dispatched by tomorrow night. I don't know how they will give it to us. They will give it to us tomorrow at 8. What is the possibility?

We don't know what to do. We don't know what to do with the people. We don't know what to do. We have to go here.

They have taken the buttons. What do you want? Do you want to see the goods? This is your house. This is your house.

This is your house. What will you do? I don't know. The pressure that brands and retailers place on their contract factories creates perverse incentives that produce dangerous and abusive behavior by factory managers. We're terrified that if they let delivery deadlines slip by a day, they'll lose the business of the customers.

With workers at Alira under increasing pressure, Supervisor Ridoy is back on the warpath. This time, he targets another child worker for not standing up straight. First, he punches her on the ear.

Our hidden cameras revealed the reality of life at Ollira Fashions for the children and the other workers. But what sort of image does the factory present to its customers from Britain and other countries? To find out, we visited the factory, posing as buyers.

I am here to see Mr. Nasir. We met merchandising manager Nasir Udin. He was quick to boast about an order he claimed Alira had just completed for one particular brand.

We have shipped denim items. Burka, Straight Zins, and you know, Lee Cooper Band. Lee Cooper, to the UK?

To the UK, Lee Cooper. How much of a business contact do you have with Lee Cooper? Yeah, Lee Cooper Band, we have already shipped more or less. Next, we asked about working hours at the factory.

Our investigator, Lotta, had clocked up 89 hours in one week, working as late as 10pm. But Udin told us a very different story. How many hours a week do your workers work?

Eight hours. Eight hours, maximum? Eight hours and something.

Sometimes we wait overtime three hours up to 8pm. 8pm? It depends on the shipment schedule.

Right, so normally they work eight hours, but if you have a rush order, then they might work a bit later. Is that right? But never beyond eight? That's the latest.

No, no, no. No work. That's fine, that's fine.

During our visit, we were taken on a tour of the factory. I'm Turkey. I have jean shorts, denim jeans.

We could see for ourselves the number of young workers on the shop floor. Many, we'd been told, were barely in their teens. We asked Udin about the ages of some of the staff.

Just one other thing. Obviously, the workers, some of them look quite young. How old are they, some of the younger ones?

Minimum 18 years. But everyone's 17. Some of them look a little bit younger than some. Size little, but they're not the best.

So they're definitely 18 plus, not younger. We later asked O'Leara Fashions about the conditions we'd found at the factory. They told us they don't use child labour, but that another factory in the same building was employing some children at the time of our investigation. As for the two supervisors...

Ridoy and Habib, who we filmed assaulting young workers, Alira claimed they were also employed by the other factory, which they said had now closed. Alira concluded it was continuing to operate strictly under the Bangladesh Labour Act. After returning to Britain, we approached Lee Cooper to make them aware of conditions at Alera Fashions. We also wanted to ask them about the jeans we'd found at the factory with Lee Cooper labels.

Although Lee Cooper still has offices in this building in London, London. The brand is now owned by Red Diamond Holdings in Luxembourg. Lee Cooper declined to be interviewed for this programme.

Company executives also rejected an offer to view our footage. In a brief... statement they said we employ a strict set of rules to ensure that all our licensees source responsibly and can confirm this product was either counterfeit or unauthorized. They said we'll take all steps to eliminate the unlawful production of Lee Cooper branded products.

We also asked Alira Fashions about the order of Lee Cooper jeans the factory told us it had completed. They said the jeans had been shipped to a another British clothing company whose name has been given to exposure after the order was subcontracted to Alira by another factory. We've since passed this information to Lee Cooper. During our investigation, we gathered evidence of violence against children, locked fire exits and crumbling buildings in factories making cheap clothes for the fashion industry.

Big changes are required before we can fully trust that the clothes we buy with a Made in Bangladesh label are produced in safe and humane conditions. The safety agreement signed by many major retailers is a step in the right direction, but less than half of the factories are currently included. Since the Rana Plaza tragedy, at least 15 more workers have been killed in factory fires.

It's very discouraging and cause for deep concern that many months after these disasters, we are still seeing factories that are locking fire doors. We are still seeing the kinds of abuses of workers that are visible. in your footage.

The industry in Bangladesh has to be cleaned up. There is finally some real pressure on the brands and retailers to do that and some commitments that they've made toward doing that. But we obviously have an extremely long way to go. Western retailers, factory owners and the Bangladeshi government still face the massive task of making this trade safe.

And the victims of Rana Plaza continue to suffer for the years of neglect. I have to work in this helpless type of situation. Walking and just moving around is very painful.

I wish I could go to places, but I can't walk, so I can't go anywhere. When I see people walking, it's very hard for me. It's painful because I think about how independent I was before and how I am now.

Why has God punished me so much? I've never hurt anyone in my life.

Transcript for:Child Labor in Bangladesh Garment Industry

Transcript for:
Child Labor in Bangladesh Garment Industry