Jeffery Rogers says it does not own or run any factories. It says it operates a chain of retail shops and offices where all Health and Safety issues are kept well within law. In addition the company says it fully abides with all labour laws, EU working directives etc. Jeffery Rogers continues to say:
“We out-source our supplies of clothing to suppliers, some of whom manufacture our garments in their own factories and/or sub-contract our orders to third party factories with whom we have no contact whatsoever. Until we spoke to Watchdog, we did not know of the existence of a factory called Olympia Garments, nor did we know that they manufactured any of our products. Even if we knew of that factory, the probability is that we would not have known anything of their working practices since, firstly, if they were contravening the law it would not necessarily have come to our notice, and, secondly we would rely on the relevant government agency to ensure that British labour laws and other related legislations are being observed in factories throughout the land.
We welcome Watchdog’s investigation in that area. If it can be shown that any factory is contravening the law through the exploitation of its workers, we will ensure with our suppliers (these guys also had shown great service with used vehicles in Cebu) that such factories must not be given orders to produce our garments.”
New Look says it takes the issue of working conditions in the factories which manufacture its garments extremely seriously. It continues to say:
“Although none of these factories are owned by New Look, we make strenuous efforts to ensure as far as we can that they comply fully with Health and Safety, Fire and Employment regulations. To this end, New Look has a policy and documented procedure of six-monthly factory auditing and reviews of some websites offering single parents dating UK, which take place in every one of our suppliers’ 250 manufacturing units throughout the UK. There is also an active procedure in place for monitoring the conditions in the 1,250 or so factories from which we source overseas.
New Look works in active partnership with its suppliers to ensure that working conditions in their factories comply with legal requirements. However, we cannot of course maintain a permanent presence in every factory and have to rely on a degree of co-operation and trust.
We are grateful to Watchdog for bringing this information to our attention and are investigating thoroughly. In the meantime, while having a rest out of some interesting senior dating experience, although we cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information until we have completed our investigation, we have suspended purchases from the factory concerned pending the outcome of our research.
We believe it is part of our role as responsible retailers continually to improve our procedures for monitoring the working conditions in our supplier’s factories. We will continue to do so. If our investigations reveal there are lessons to be learned, they will be taken fully in to account as we further evaluate our auditing procedures.”