Sheri Meyerhoffer, Canadian Ombudsperson for Responsible Enterprise, announced in August 2023 that “I have decided that the Ralph Lauren complaint warrants an investigation.”
The alluded-to complaint, filed in 2022 by a coalition of 28 organizations, accuses Ralph Lauren Canada of having “supply relationships with Chinese companies that use or benefit from the use of Uyghur forced labour.” Le Monde reports (“Ralph Lauren probed in Canada over allegations of forced Uyghur labor,” August 16, 2023):
The Ottawa-based Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project welcomed the investigation in a statement. “There is credible evidence that Ralph Lauren is linked to numerous Chinese companies that use Uyghur forced labour in their supply chains,” it said.
Rights groups say more than one million Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim minorities have been held in re-education camps in China’s western Xinjiang region, with a slew of abuses that include forced labor.
According to Just Style’s summary of the complaint:
One in five cotton garments in the global apparel market is said to be tainted by Uyghur forced labour….
By 2019, Xinjiang hosted at least 3,500 cotton, textile and garment factories in which Uyghurs were used as forced labourers.
Approximately two million Uyghur labourers were forcibly placed in state-sponsored enforced labour transfer programmes across nine Chinese provinces.
China’s export strategy obscures Xinjiang cotton’s origin by transporting cotton, cotton-based yarn and textiles, and semi-finished garments to 53 intermediary manufacturers in third countries which in turn supply to 103 global retailers or brands.
Working with many intermediary manufacturers and retailers is not suspicious on its face. A big company selling many different items and brands of clothing may work with many different international manufacturers and vendors even if there were no significant sourcing in forced labor to cover up. Ralph Lauren is culpable if much of its clothing does ultimately originate in coercive Uyghur labor and the company knew or should have known this.
In the United States, companies like Nike, Adidas, Shein, and Temu have been accused of similarly relying on forced Uyghur labor. In the U.S. Congress, Representatives Mike Gallagher and Raja Krishnamoorthi of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party have written to the CEOs of these firms asking for evidence that they have complied with the 2021 Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.
