Fashion brand Boohoo, which vehemently expressed its support for Black Lives Matter in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, is now embroiled in a slave labor scandal.
US Customs and Border Protection has seen enough enough to launch an investigation into the company after campaign group Liberty Shared exposed how the company “is not doing enough to stop forced labour in the Leicester factories which make many of its clothes,” reports
Sky News.
“The evidence of Boohoo and forced labour is quite compelling. I think it will be a wake-up call for British institutions about how they’re handling modern slavery enforced labour, particularly in a community like Leicester East,” said Duncan Jepson.
A report last year by lawyer Alison Levitt QC found that the allegations against the company, which centered around illegally low wages and poor working conditions, were “substantially true.” Employees were also made to work through lockdown, potentially exposing them to COVID-19.
Any potential US ban would cost the company more than a fifth of the company’s total revenue.
The scandal is particularly ironic because Boohoo was one of the numerous corporations that vehemently virtue signaled in support of BLM during last summer’s riots, with the company posting a black square on social media for “Blackout Tuesday while asserting, “we are listening.”
