Workers at a factory in China used by the company that makes clothing for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line and other brands worked nearly 60 hours a week to earn wages of little more than $62 a week, according to a factory audit released Monday.
The factory’s 80 workers knit clothes for the contractor, G-III Apparel Group, which has held the exclusive license to make the Ivanka Trump brand’s $158 dresses, $79 blouses and other clothes since 2012. The company also makes clothes for Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other brands.
Inspectors with the Fair Labor Association, an industry monitoring group whose members include Apple and Nike, found two dozen violations of international labor standards during a two-day tour of the factory in October, saying in a report that workers faced daunting hours, high turnover, and pay near or below China’s minimum wage.
The inspection offers a rare look at the working conditions of the global manufacturing machine that helped make Trump’s fashion brand a multimillion-dollar business.
Its release also comes as the president’s daughter has sought to cast herself as both a champion of workplace issues and a defender of her father’s “buy American, hire American” agenda. Trump, whose book “Women Who Work” debuts next week, was in Germany on Tuesday for public discussions about global entrepreneurship and empowerment.
“We can add billions to the global economy by creating an enabling environment, increasing women’s labour force participation and business ownership, and improving the productivity of their work,” Trump wrote in a Financial Times essay Monday.
Well it would certainly be hard to improve productivity past 60 hour work weeks now wouldn't it?
And since it is quite likely that a clothing manufacturing plant would hire mostly women, I guess this is how Ivanka Trump empowers women in the workforce.
Clearly Trump's own High Society Barbie is just as full of shit as her Cheeto tinged father.
