Financial Times

Factory sewing French army uniforms akin to ‘boot camp’ workers say
French army uniforms are being made in a company in Sri Lanka whose management style is better suited to a military boot camp than a factory, an international labour union representing garment workers has said.
The International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers’ Federation has told French Defence Minister Michele Alliot-Marie that French army uniforms are being sourced from GP Garments, a Belgian-owned factory in the Biyagama Free Trade Zone which has for the past few months been waging a union-busting campaign against its workforce.

But the company hit back saying they are prepared to close the factory and relocate in another country, if the crisis continues. ITGLWF general secretary Neil Kearney accused the firm’s local management of trying to destroy the union, saying police special forces had threatened a union organizer with imprisonment while other union leaders had got threatening phone calls.

The union conducted a work stoppage when their demands for protection from intimidation and police interference in trade union affairs were ignored and the management responded by locking out the workers, leaving wages and bonuses unpaid.

The company re-opened the factory three weeks later but failed to pay outstanding wages and bonuses and the workers then occupied the factory, Kearney said. “The company then made wild and unsubstantiated claims of ‘acts of terrorism’ and terminated some 480 workers,” Kearney said.

The company management denied the charges saying the workers had made “unreasonable” demands to force the management to recognize the union. The management refused to do so as there is no law in Sri Lanka (within FTZs) to recognize unions, only the right to bargain, company lawyer Edwin Neville Joseph told The Sunday Times FT.

The management sacked 479 workers after they held company director Stephan van Ende and the general manager hostage from 4.30 pm to 1.00 am together with 63 “loyal” workers on April 20, he said.

“We don’t want to recognize the union because we have no legal obligation to do so,” he said. “We know the type of union we are dealing with. We don’t want to recognise them.”

He said the company has no intention of re-employing the sacked workers and that the Belgian owners had said they were ready to close down the factory and relocate their production in Bangladesh and China.

Back to Business