President Donald Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka Trump, will visit India this week and will promote female entrepreneurship and economic power, but the question about the work conditions for the workers in India who make clothes for her fashion line will loom over her visit, The Washington Post reports. Ivanka hasn’t spoken very much about the largely female workforce in India and other Asian countries that makes her clothing, even though she has called for more support for all the women who work. Her brand does not want to disclose the names of the factories that produce her goods or to speak about the working conditions.
According to the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ivanka Trump has been a champion of women’s economic empowerment not just in words, but in action. She added that Ivanka helped launch a World Bank initiative to help female entrepreneurs gain better access to capital which will empower women across the developing world to start their own businesses.
Trump is supposed to be hosted by India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a restored palace, far away from India’s garment industry, in which laborers earn about $100 a month, some amid punishing workloads, verbal abuse, and sexual harassment, according to union organizers and industry experts.
The trip revives the questions about the practices in Ivanka’s company. Several months ago, Washington Post wrote that Trump’s brand relies solely on foreign workers to produce the goods and lags behind many in the clothing industry when it comes to overseeing the treatment of workers in its supply chain. Some executives then said that the brand had started looking into hiring a nonprofit workers’ rights group to increase oversight and help improve conditions.
More than 20 labor and human rights groups asked Trump to disclose the names of its supplier factories and allow independent groups to monitor the conditions, but she has not responded.
Be the first to comment