Tesco has launched an inquiry into claims that dozens of its staff in Malaysia are working up to 80 hours a week for as little as GBP0.08 (US$0.16) an hour.
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The UK retail giant is studying claims published in The Daily Telegraph that said dozens of people subcontracted to work for Tesco Malaysia found themselves employed in circumstances that meet the United Nations’ definition of forced labour.
Migrant workers from Bangladesh told the paper they paid a labour agent up to GBP1,500 to land a job at one of Tesco’s Malaysian stores.
The workers then find themselves working for between GBP20 to GBP50 a month after deductions to their salary.
Tesco said it takes allegations such as these very seriously and has launched an investigation with their contractors.
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By GlobalData“Doing business in some overseas markets can be challenging as local laws and customs sometimes appear to conflict with the high expectations we have here in the UK and elsewhere in the international community,” a Tesco spokesperson told just-food.
“However, wherever we operate we insist on the highest standards of welfare for workers, both our own and – as in this case – those employed by contractors working for us.
“While we do not believe that they are deliberately seeking to disadvantage their workers, if improvements need to be made we will not hesitate to make them.”
The Daily Telegraph said labour agents promised the Bangladeshi workers a salary of GBP180 – GBP215 a month. But migrant workers in Malaysia rarely earn more than a gross salary of GBP117 a month, the paper reported.
Roger Plant, head of the International Labour Organisation’s special action programme to combat forced labour, told the paper: “If people are deceived so that they get into substantial debt and can’t work off that debt in a reasonable time this amounts to debt bondage which in turn amounts to forced labour and forced labour is a criminal offence under international law.”
