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People

At Primark we're committed to supporting the livelihoods of the people who make our clothes. Without them we wouldn’t be where we are today, and we take our responsibilities to them very seriously. Here’s how we’re using the power of our business to do just that…

How we work with Primark suppliers

We work with suppliers, factories and the farmers in our Primark Sustainable Cotton Programme (PSCP) around the world to create the products our customers love. Every time we take on a new Primark supplier, they must commit to meeting the internationally recognized standards set out in our Code of Conduct. We work closely with our suppliers and their factories and we always return at least once a year to make sure our standards are being maintained. In fact, our team on the ground carry out around 3,000 inspections every year to ensure workers’ hours, wages and rights are protected.

We've been investing in training programs for many years to support both factory workers and our PSCP farmers. These programs are aimed at giving people the opportunity to develop their workplace skills, as well as focusing on their physical and mental health and wellbeing. Find out more...

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We employ 130 local people in our Ethical Trade and Environmental Sustainability team. Between them, they visit every factory we work with at least once a year to conduct face-to-face audits, while also delivering training for factory staff and workers.

The India Worker Empowerment Program (IWEP) started out in South India as a suite of projects designed to address the needs of vulnerable garment workers, particularly female and migrant workers in and around Tirupur. It launched with My Life in 2017 and has been growing ever since. It now consists of My Space, My Journey and PASS, which have evolved to address the needs of workers across a breadth of topics.

My Life in South India, implemented with international NGO Women Win and local NGO Naz Foundation, supports factories in training vulnerable workers on basic life skills, including health and safety in the workplace, rights and responsibilities, communication and teamwork. The training is particularly targeted at vulnerable workers and is delivered through a "play-based" approach, which uses interactive activities to help workers engage and learn. Factory management has also recognized the positive impact on the factory environment.

In 2018 we worked with our partners to further scale up the project by launching a "Train the Trainers" module, whereby each of the participating factories nominated several staff that would be trained to become "My Life Trainers". We're currently working to re-launch the project after Covid lockdowns prevented any face-to-face training from taking place. We've worked with our partners and factories to pilot online training and in-person activities that can accommodate social distancing requirements.

My Space is implemented in partnership with St. John’s Medical College. It was set up to provide practical support for workers’ mental health. The project includes raising awareness of and reducing the stigma around addressing mental health issues in the workplace. It establishes basic counseling services in factories by the training of selected factory staff by medical professionals from St. John's, and engaging with workers and managers to reduce the stigma around talking about mental health. We regularly follow up with the local teams to monitor and discuss progress. Numerous workers have been supported with a variety of problems.

In 2020 we introduced a training module for the workplace counselors on sexual harassment. Factories are subsequently encouraged to appoint these trained counselors to their Internal Complaints Committees – the formal mechanism that addresses cases of workplace sexual harassment in India.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, factory counselors, management and HR staff continued to use My Space networks to support workers in their communities. They helped raise awareness about COVID-19 precautionary measures and offered general mental health support.

Begun in 2019, the PASS program provides education and practical support to help Indian garment workers in and around Tirupur access the government support that they're entitled to, in terms of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) and Employees State Insurance (ESI) health plan. Community organizers train peer volunteers in the local community, who then help workers enroll and take advantage of the schemes.

The project has been successful in helping workers access their social security benefits. It helped one worker apply to the Employee State Insurance plan for health treatment following a workplace injury, and supported another to gain access to their ESI and EPF entitlements, which had been held up by administrative errors. Community organizers also collate information to assist SAVE’s advocacy efforts with government and other key stakeholders. PASS builds on our previous Worker Education Groups program with SAVE, which started in 2010.

In 2019, building on the positive experience in south India, we worked with international NGO Women Win and local NGO Girl Determined to bring the My Life project to workers in Myanmar. Both political developments in Myanmar and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic created significant challenges for the project's rollout. As a result, the project pivoted to support current and former factory workers understand and help address gender-based violence (GBV) and harassment in their lives and their communities. My Life gave women the chance to learn more about addressing GBV now and in the future. There are plans to engage those who have been training under the project as "GBV Facilitators" to help factories develop effective strategies to better prevent and address GBV.

We worked with Impactt and Women Win, supported by funding from the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s Vulnerable Supply Chains Facility, to design and implement this project. The program addressed the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on low income and vulnerable workers in global supply chains. Its aim was to tackle the immediate and long-term challenges of supporting the employment, livelihoods and incomes of Myanmar’s ready-made garment sector workers. This innovative program gave conditional cash transfers to workers, plus factory level training and support for community organizations, to help address gender issues facing working women. Unfortunately, the project closed early due to the impact of events in Myanmar on UK Government funding. But we learned a lot from this project, and the experience was shared at a number of industry-wide events hosted by the Vulnerable Supply Chains Facility.

Sudokkho was a UK and Swiss government-funded project, and is an example of how we’re supporting career progression for workers, particularly for women, in our supply chain. Through a structured in-house technical training system, factories are supported to better train new and existing sewing machine operators. The majority of workers trained under this project, many of whom are women, become eligible for promotion and pay rises. This means that workers involved in the program, most of whom are women, are learning new skills that enhance their earning potential. Overall, since it started in 2016, the project supported the livelihoods of 16,000 workers through helping them develop their technical workplace skills.

In 2021, in partnership with Microfinance Opportunities, a US-based NGO, and the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM), their local partner in Bangladesh, we established this project aimed at strengthening workers’ voices through an understanding of their views and experiences in the workplace. The project was modeled on the Garment Worker Diaries project in Bangladesh.
We established a sample of 400 workers throughout various factories in our supply chain. They were all recruited remotely via community networks and were paid for their time on the project. We asked them a set of questions repeatedly over a defined period of time, to allow us to understand their views on health and safety at work, wages and bonuses and retrenchment.

In Bangladesh, it’s a legal requirement for factories to have a worker participation committee, but these committees are often not very effective.
The Ethical Trading Initiative’s Social Dialogue program, begun in 2016, strengthens the ability of workers to participle in the committees and helps the factory management run these committees effectively and in accordance with the law.

The program trains elected workers and management on key aspects of being a committee member and issues such as understanding labor law, handling grievances, problem solving, formal meeting procedures, effective communication, and sexual harassment.

There is also a course specifically designed for the female committee members. This covers issues such as maternity pay, sexual harassment and wage discrimination, as well as developing soft skills including public speaking and communication. It’s also a chance for women to discuss safety in the workplace and on their daily commute. Many of the women who take part in the training report that it improves their confidence to manage conflicts at work and home.

The Promising Futures program, implemented by Carnstone for workers in China since 2018, aims to raise awareness and understanding of China’s complex social insurance system among workers and factory management. It also supports them in accessing social insurance. The project uses WeChat, a social media platform and web-based materials to raise awareness and share information. Online resources include an educational drama and a website offering information and practical guidance on social insurance across 13 provinces in China that have factories which supply Primark. We’re also funding more website content to provide information on additional provinces in China where social security procedures may differ.

Launched as a pilot in 2018, our China CIQ Worker App is designed to understand human resources practices, improve communication and raise awareness of workers’ rights. The pilot program resulted in improved transparency of HR practices, better communication between management and workers and enhanced worker awareness of rights. The app also provides a function for workers to raise grievances. To ensure that grievances raised on the app are addressed properly, we’re supporting factories in implementing appropriate management systems and processes to handle and resolve grievances.

We helped to set up Worker Learning Clubs in factories to educate workers on OHS (Occupational Health and Safety) issues, core labor rights and life skills. The clubs are led by Worker Champions, who attend a two-day training course to equip them with the skills to run the clubs effectively and raise awareness and knowledge of OHS.

Worker Champions share learning materials through WeChat to support peer learning. Although not a women-specific OHS Project, the developers made extra efforts to incorporate gender equality considerations into the content. It covers specific concerns of female workers regarding gender discrimination, sexual harassment and women’s labor rights protection. Information on OHS and job restrictions for female workers are included in the learning modules.

We’re a partner member of the ILO Better Work program, which operates in key sourcing countries. It conducts monitoring of sites and helps to train management and workers on preventing and addressing sexual harassment for workers, middle managers and supervisors.
Establishing factory-level committees to support communication between managers and workers is central to the Better Work program. To ensure women’s voices are heard, they’re highly encouraged to join these committees and at least half of the members must be female. A specific project has been developed to help female workers cope in the workplace and develop leadership skills. The program has also supported women in overcoming resistance from family members to join factory committees.

STOP aims to address sexual harassment and gender-based violence in the workplace. The project, which started in 2019, delivers support and training to help factories establish and maintain effective workplace mechanisms to prevent and respond to sexual harassment. You can find out more about this project under Gender-Based Violence and Sexual Harassment.

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