Sweatshops in Leicester - who are the owners?

petunia

But is the mayor responsible? I would think so. He is the man in charge.This sort of behaviour by the factory owners is deplorable. But for the council and council workers to choose to ignore it due to cultural sensitivities is criminal, whatever their political persuasion.

Cultural sensitivities or backhanders?
It needs investigating.

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Callistemon

petunia

But is the mayor responsible? I would think so. He is the man in charge.This sort of behaviour by the factory owners is deplorable. But for the council and council workers to choose to ignore it due to cultural sensitivities is criminal, whatever their political persuasion.

Cultural sensitivities or backhanders?
It needs investigating.

But who is responsible?

Millie22

Everything Kitty says is correct. Local people know exactly what's happening in the 'factories' in Leicester. The owners constantly change and are always unavailable when asked for. The working conditions are really not good at all.

So did anybody find out who was responsible for inspecting working conditions and report the owners to HMRC for not paying minimum wage?

Did they go to their MP if they knew people were being exploited?

Lots of the rich factory owners live in the City where there are also houses as you describe. And if they were Tory supporters the Labour Mayor would have sorted them out presumably.

When I said they were in terraced houses I did not mean that people were home working but that the terraced houses has been turned into factories.

I know this - why didnt the authorities,

Which authorities?

If residential homes were being used for commercial purposes, they should have been reported and business rates paid, but the council is not responsible for inspecting factories nor for enforcing minimum wage.

I still think that the big problem here is that there are "systems" which don't seem to co-operate with each other.

I don't see why it matters where the business owners live. I would assume they vote Conservative, but that doesn't really matter either.

my post was deleted. Just as in Bradford, the fear of being called as a racist, ensures that the system perdures.

People of Leicester know that some Asian groups exploit other poorer, less educated Asians from different parts of India- just as happens in India and Pakistan, and previously in Uganda where local africans were exploited.

It is not racist to face the truth- at all. Refusing to look at the facts, as in Bradford, is in fact extremely racist and unjust.

This isn't just confined to Leicester, it's in every major city across the country. In the Manchester area, 4 brothers employed 11 Slovakian men and women to work 70/80 hours a week, sometimes 7 days a week, for £240. They were living in basic conditions and sleeping on mattresses on the floors of the house owned by Mohammed Anjum Iqbal.

The gangmasters know that their modern slaves are too terrified to complain.

We should be more concerned about modern slavery than we seem to be.

We can't change the wrongs of the past.
Slavery was wrong then but it was during an era when thousands of British men, women and children were also sent off to the Colonies for minor misdemeanors, chained below in ships and, if they survived, sold or allocated to work, sometimes on the plantations or given hard labour building America and Australia, given to landowners to do with as they wished.

The fact that there is still slavery going on around the world and in this country today is something that we need to protest about.
We can't change the past but we can put right the present and ensure it doesn't happen in the future.

The government knew about the conditions in Leicester in 2018. The FT journalist Sarah O'Connor appeared before a select committee and gave evidence, but every one of the committee's recommendations was rejected:

www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/environmental-audit-committee/news-parliament-2017/fixing-fashion-government-response-published-17-19/

www.ft.com/content/0b26ee5d-4f4f-4d57-a700-ef49038de18c

www.ft.com/content/e427327e-5892-11e8-b8b2-d6ceb45fa9d0

It's not good enough to blame the Leicester mayor. He didn't have the authority to do anything. The government knew, but chose to do nothing, not because of a fear of offending racist sensibilities. Presumably they just didn't care or have nothing against illegally low wages and lack of red tape.

Callistemon I don't believe that we should ever forget about slavery of the past. Black people are still suffering discrimination after their ancestors were forcibly removed from their homelands. It's also true that the Industrial Revolution and British nineteenth century wealth was the result of the slave trade, while the West Indies and African colonies didn't have share of the wealth.

Legally, modern "slaves" aren't stripped of their identity and freedom in the same way as the slaves in the past were.

Neverthless, we shouldn't continue to turn a blind eye to what's going on, not just in Leicester but throughout the country. The last article I linked to above has some very shocking comments following it. The common message is that the government is just not enforcing its own laws on the minimum wage or on working conditions.

Surely instead of complaining about Local Authorities this scandal should be tackled at a national level? The buck stops with central government. They could easily order a crackdown.

vegansrock

Surely instead of complaining about Local Authorities this scandal should be tackled at a national level? The buck stops with central government. They could easily order a crackdown.

Exactly! The Leicester mayor did chair a meeting last year with the HSC and other relevant bodies. (It's in the FT report.) There was a report made to Parliament, but none of the recommendations were followed up. Local authorities have very limited powers to do anything, especially when the problem is endemic and widespread.

Presumably the government is relaxed about very low paid workers contributing to UK GDP. There are some MPs who don't agree with the minimum/living wage anyway and a couple of them who have made public their view that British workers are lazy.

I would love to live in the La La land that some posters inhabit and not know what goes on with voting and illegal practices.
I think that Meryl Streep was on the right lines here. It's one of the reasons I'm against postal voting.
On our local lunch time news it said that the health and safety inspectors had been into 34 Leicester factories and that 8 of them had been closed down. There are thought to be about 1,000 of them altogether.

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I can't believe you reposted your previous deleted post biba

Attacking refugees is a new low.

The link that growstuff provided is very interesting and gives a great amount of detail as to how and why these sweatshops are set up and flourish.

Chewbacca

The link that growstuff provided is very interesting and gives a great amount of detail as to how and why these sweatshops are set up and flourish.

I'm glad you found it interesting. I sometimes wonder if people actually click on links.

I still don't know what the answer is, but I hope one positive of the situation in Leicester is that it's come out into the open and people might discuss it.

Harriet Hartman visited the area in 2015 to do a report on these Dark Factories ( as they are called)
The report was presented to Parliament.

I looked at the link too.
Some retail shops were driving these prices, High Street names, not ones I use but certainly my DC when they were younger and my DGD is just becoming interested in clothes.

It brings a new meaning to Made in Britain.

Is it going to change. Not a chance. People who operate illegally will always find a way. Car wash operatives have been operating in clear sight of councils for how long? and nothing has been done for those workers, so what hope for practises that go on behind closed doors? Zilch.

Callistemon, attacking refugees? Where? When?

Nothing of the sort.