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The footballer-turned-sports presenter is being heavily criticised for a £55 jacket made by labourers living in poverty-stricken conditions in Bangladesh
Published : 01 Jul 2024, 01:15 PM
Gary Lineker, former footballer and English broadcaster, has come under fire for wearing a sage-green jacket from his Next X Gary Lineker range, for which, workers were paid Tk 60 an hour.
The 63-year-old sports presenter and analyst was heavily criticised for flouting BBC’s guidelines after promoting his own clothing range during England’s Euros game against Serbia on Jun 16.
Now, he is being questioned again for wearing the £55 jacket, which was made by labourers who are living in poverty-stricken conditions in Bangladesh, according to a report published by the Mail on Sunday.
Khadija Khatun, a trade union leader in Bangladesh, expressed her shock over Lineker promoting clothes that were tailored by workers making ‘poverty wages’.
Since the controversy, Lineker, who may have earned a whopping £2 million from his Next deal according to branding experts, has not worn clothes from his Next range while appearing on television.
Following a two-week investigation, the Mail on Sunday traced the jacket back to Aptech Group, a firm in Gazipur that runs a factory approximately 27 miles north of Dhaka.
Four of the six employees of the factory that the Mail spoke to confirmed that they had worked on or seen other workers of the factory work on the green jacket that the former footballer wore on television.
Aptech’s factory stretches across 460,000 sq ft of land that tailors high-street apparel and an additional 229,000 sq ft where business suits are manufactured.
The majority of the workers of the factory also work overtime in addition to working six days a week as they are paid a monthly wage of Tk 13,500. These workers live in tin-roofed houses near the factory complex where they only have one common living space linked to a kitchen and a bathroom.
While speaking to the Mail, one of the workers confirmed stitching the inside pocket of the jacket three months ago.
“There are about 100 of us who worked on the jacket,” she said. “All of the jackets of this kind were made with my hand. If there were 2,000 jackets, then I handled 2,000 of them.”
According to the workers, after working for 48 hours a week, she earns Tk 60 an hour.
The woman also claimed that the employees of the Aptech factory have to work in extreme temperatures under ceiling fans, even when temperatures reach beyond 40 degrees.
She further claimed that her superiors abused the workers verbally during their shifts.
“When the supervisors feel pressure from those above, they behave badly with us. They tell us to hurry up and talk to us in anger. They swear at us,” she added.
Another worker of the factory, who lives in Latifpur, an area near the Aptech factory, said he remembers making the delivery for the jacket’s fabric to the cutting section.
The employee, who has a young child, also earns Tk 13,500 in monthly wages. His previous payslip from January showed he was making a meagre amount of Tk 12,700 then.
He works overtime to send money to his parents after a 48-hour work week at the rate of Tk 60 an hour.
Reporters from the Mail also spoke to another employee from the Aptech factory who remembers seeing the sage-green jacket being made in the same compound she works in.
She lives in a larger house with five dilapidated rooms, which houses three generations of her family. According to her, her house doesn’t have electricity most evenings.
While describing her place of work at Aptech, the woman in her 30s, said, “There is pushing and shoving, there is swearing and shouting. If their superiors put pressure on them (the supervisors), then they will pressure us.”
She earns Tk 14,100 per month to pay the college fees of her three children. Her husband also works in a factory.
According to Mahbub Sarwar, a deputy general manager of Aptech Group, the factory pays the minimum wage set by the government of Bangladesh.
‘The workers are happy with their existing pay. The pay is designed to support a reasonable standard of living,” said Sarwar.
He further added that the company’s ventilation systems ‘effectively keep the factory floors cool’ and the factory’s ‘anti-harassment committee’ guarantees a ‘safe and respectful workplace.’
In 2012, Lineker visited Bangladesh while making a film for the BBC's Sport Relief and got emotional while watching children collect bits of plastic from a garbage dump stretching across a 100-acre land.
The host of the Euro 2024 podcast said, “It’s the most appalling thing I have ever seen. Welcome to hell.”
Following his visit, he told The Sunday Times, “I’ve visited poor countries before, but this was more personal. It was very moving.”
Last year, workers took to the streets demanding a higher minimum wage in Bangladesh.
Despite the wage being increased from Tk 8,000 to Tk 12,500 last year, the unions pushed for a minimum wage of Tk 23,000 based on a study conducted by the Bangladesh Institute for Labour Studies.
Khadija Khatun of the United Garment Workers Association told the Mail: “Mr Lineker should use his influence to ensure garment workers in Bangladesh get more money for the work they do.
“The problem with the minimum wage for garment workers in Bangladesh is that no one can actually live on it. Mr Lineker should visit Bangladesh again and see the living conditions of those who earn just above this minimum wage.”
According to Next, the Aptech Group’s factory was given an ‘acceptable’ rating after the company inspected it last year.
The apparel company said the employees of the Aptech factory were not harassed by superiors, underpaid, or working under extreme heat.
According to Next, one in four apparel items sold in the UK are made in Bangladesh.
“Over the last ten years, Bangladesh's garment industry’s minimum wage has more than doubled. Manufacturing has contributed to a dramatic improvement in living standards and working conditions, and while we understand the pace of change is frustrating, huge progress has been made,” a spokesman for Next said.
Gary Lineker began endorsing Next in 2022.
