Fast fashion and fast controversy. That’s Shein for you. The Chinese fast fashion brand is facing the heat after two dozen US representatives has called for an independent investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) into the company’s labour practices.

On Monday, news agency Reuters accessed a letter written by a bipartisan group of lawmakers asking the SEC to independently audit and verify that the company does not use forced labour from the country’s predominantly Muslim Uyghur population.

So, is Shein guilty of forced labour? Is this the only controversy affecting the brand? Here are some answers.

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Shein using forced labour?

Ahead of the company’s possible initial public offering in the United States, around 22 lawmakers have written a letter to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler, urging that the watchdog investigate if Chinese company Shein utilises Uyghur forced labour in creating their products.

US representatives Jennifer Wexton and John Rose leading the group wrote in the letter that there were credible allegations of the company’s use of underpaid and forced labour in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and that they were demanding transparency and seeking independent verification – free from state influence – that the company does not use Uyghur force labour before it is allowed to register on the US exchange.

“We strongly believe that the ability to issue and trade securities on our domestic exchanges is a privilege, and that foreign companies wishing to do so must uphold a demonstrated commitment to human rights across the globe,” the lawmakers further wrote in the letter.

The allegations of using Uyghur forced labour aren’t new. In November last year, Bloomberg had reported that the Chinese fashion mammoth had used cotton from the Xinjiang region of China in some of its clothing. Two batches of clothes were selected for the testing and it was found that both batches had cotton which was grown in the Xinjiang region.

Last year, the United Nations published a report that stated that there was reasonable evidence to conclude that forced labour was taking place in China’s far-western region, where activists say more than one million ethnic minority Muslims have been detained in internment camps.

Tomoya Obokata, the special rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery, had stated in the report that evidence of forced labour existed within the region’s system of “vocational skills education and training” centres and a poverty alleviation programme that involves transferring surplus rural labourers to other work.

While such programmes created employment and income for ethnic minorities as claimed by the government, evidence pointed to the work in many cases being of an “involuntary nature”, the rapporteur said.

“Further, given the nature and extent of powers exercised over workers during forced labour, including excessive surveillance, abusive living and working conditions, restriction of movement through internment, threats, physical and/or sexual violence, and other inhumane or degrading treament, some instances may amount to enslavement as a crime against humanity, meriting a further independent analysis,” Obokata said.

For those who don’t know, the Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. They are mostly practising Muslims. Beijing has long been accused of mistreating the Uyghur population – allegations range from forcibly sterilisation of Uyghur women to committing genocide.

Interestingly, the letter to the SEC echoes similar concerns by outside human rights groups. A coalition called ‘Shut Down Shein’ has also called on the SEC to deny IPO registration to Shein unless it provides proof of compliance with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

“Access to US capital markets is a privilege, not a right, and should not be given freely to corporations who threaten US national security with nefarious business practices, and who are making Americans complicit in their violation of US law,” Chapin Fay, executive director of Shut Down Shein, has written.

Many controversies of Shein

Shein has garnered a sordid reputation thanks to its myriad of controversies. Founded in Nanjing, China in 2008, the fast fashion giant, which is notoriously private, is now headquartered in Singapore.

The company is everywhere, even in the US, and has grown to become the world’s largest fashion retailer as of 2022. In April 2022, Bloomberg valued the brand at $100 billion. Its biggest selling point is the low pricing of clothes that are shipped to more than 150 countries and regions worldwide, catering to women in their teens and 20s.

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However, the e-commerce brand, which is reliant on digital influencer marketing to generate the majority of its advertising, has been embroiled in various scandals – from underpaying its workers, to plagiarising designs and even selling garments that contain an unsafe level of toxic chemicals.

In June last year, the company was in a bind when videos emerged online of different ‘help me’ messages written or stitched onto labels of Shein clothing tags. Some of the messages read: ‘help me’ or ‘SOS’ and even ‘I have dental pain’. It was unclear if these notes were specifically made by Shein workers, but it gave credence to the allegations that Shein was using forced labour.

Another controversy that the clothing brand was embroiled in was when a documentary by British television network Channel 4 titled ‘Untold: Inside the Shein Machine’ shed light on the horrible working conditions of its employees. The documentary revealed that workers were forced to work up to 18-hour days and were given only one day off a month. In one factory, the documentary showed women washing their hair during lunch breaks, and workers were penalised two-thirds of their daily wage if they made a mistake on a clothing item.

Swiss watchdog Public Eye released another detailed report in November 2022, which accused Shein of violating Chinese labour laws. The group hired independent Chinese researchers to track Shein’s manufacturing and packing process in China and Europe and found that many were running informal factories set up in residential buildings.

There were also reports that said that the fast fashion giant was selling items with high amounts of lead in it. A Greenpeace report had carried out testing on Shein products and found that 15 per cent of 47 products that were tested contained toxic chemicals that break European Union regulatory limits.

SheinSpeaks

Reacting to claims of using forced labour, Shein spokesperson Peter Pernot-Day said in a prepared statement that the company takes visibility across its entire supply chain seriously.

“We are committed to respecting human rights and adhering to local laws and regulations in each market we operate in,” Pernot-Day said. “Our suppliers must adhere to a strict code of conduct that is aligned to the International Labour Organization’s core conventions. We have zero tolerance for forced labour.”

With inputs from agencies

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