Victoria's Secret pays $8.3m settlement to sacked Thai workers

Over a thousandsackedThaigarmentworkerswho made bras for a factory supplying lingerie giantVictoria'sSecrethave received a landmark $8.3 millionsettlement, labour rights activists said Saturday.

Brilliant AllianceThaiclosed down its Samut Prakan factory in March 2021 after going bankrupt.

But the 1250 laid-offworkers-- many of whom had worked at the factory for over a decade -- did not receive severance payouts mandated underThailaw.

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The factory also produced underwear for plus size American brands Lane Bryant and Torrid, owned by Sycamore Partners -- but onlyVictoria'sSecretcontributed to thesettlementvia a loan arrangement with the factory's owners.

Victoria'sSecretconfirmed in a statement that an agreement had been reached, but it did not mention the amount involved.

"Over several months we had been in active communication with the factory owners to facilitate a resolution," the company said.

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"We regret they were not ultimately in a position to conclude this matter on their own so to ensure theworkersreceived their full severance amounts owed,Victoria'sSecretagreed to advance the severance funds to the factory owners," it added.

Sycamore Partners did not respond to a request for comment from AFP.

The agreement is the largest-ever wage theftsettlementat an individual garment factory, the internationalworkersrights group Solidarity Centre said.

"I think it's extremely unprecedented and represents a new model -- the scale of severance and interest paid on it... as well as direct engagement by the brand," Solidarity Center Thailand country director David Welsh told AFP.

"It eliminates the fiction that multinational brands are passive investors," he said.

"We want more brands to do the same because sadly this will not be the last of its kind -- there will be many, many more cases."

For the past year,sackedworkersandThaiunion representatives have protested outside Government House in Bangkok calling for their pay.

Prasit Prasopsuk, president of the Confederation of Industrial Labour of Thailand said some protestingworkershad been charged with criminal offences, including violating public gathering rules during the pandemic.

A Worker Rights Consortium report from April last year said it had documented similar wage theft cases at 31 garment factories in nine countries.

Worker Rights Consortium executive director Scott Nova said those cases were just the "tip of the iceberg" and that the issue of wage theft in the garment industry had exploded during the pandemic as clothing orders declined.

He estimated garmentworkersworldwide were owed $500 million as a result of factory closures and unpaid severance.

Someworkersat the Samut Prakan factory had received the equivalent of more than four years' wages last week, he said.

"It's like the equivalent of a worker's life savings... and it's simply stolen. What it means to lose that and get it back is difficult to capture in words," Nova said.

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