Gap and Banana Republic sweatshops exposed

Sitting high above a maze of grimy streets and open sewers, Sagar Yadav shyly admits to knowing that the Banana Republic clothes he helps to make are sold for many times his daily wage of $3.60. "I do not know how much they cost exactly but we know we could not buy them," says the 21-year-old. The story of the young "spotter", whose job it is to notice stains and zap them with a cleaning gun in the garment factory, lurks behind cheap, stylish clothes in the west. Yadav says that he is supposed to get $22 for his basic 48-hour week and double the hourly rate for overtime. However, he had often not received the extra money. "They just do not give it to us, so we are working for free. If we complain we are abused with filthy language. What can we do? There are no other jobs," said Yadav, who shares a room in a tenement block in Kapashera with three other workers. Once a sleepy hamlet on the edge of Delhi, Kapashera has become a densely-packed township of 800,000 people. Its growth is largely down to the success of India's overseas rag trade. About a quarter of India's garment exports, worth $20 billion in total, are manufactured by workers in Kapashera. In a series of interviews with workers in the township, the Guardian found employees making clothes for Banana Republic and Gap who said that they were often forced to work without pay. Others said that there had been immense pressure applied in recent months to meet a big order from abroad. "We were told that our targets were doubled. Before, we could go to the toilet but the pressure is so much that we have to meet our target before we can go," said Raman Bhagat, a 25-year-old migrant worker from Bihar. "In the busy period, if you come back late from holiday or turn up 15 minutes late at work it means big trouble. You will definitely lose that day's pay." A regular complaint is that the working week regularly exceeds 70 hours with only one day off every fortnight, in contravention of the Indian government's laws which put a limit of 60 hours. Although multinational companies send regular monitors to assess working conditions in their suppliers' factories, workers say they have been "coached" to say the right thing. "When the foreigners come we know to tell them that we only do two hours a day of overtime. Of course we know that this is wrong but we are helpless to say anything else," said Naval Gupta, a 19-year-old tailor. While shoppers in Britain are able to buy affordable stylish clothes, charities say these bargains are only possible because retailers wrench lower prices from suppliers in the developing world who get clothes stitched at the lowest possible cost. None of the workers said they could save money. In the housing block the Guardian visited, each worker paid 1,000 rupees a month for the right to share a room with three others. There were 56 such rooms and just six toilets. Yet the workers say they are desperate for work. Many say thousands turn up from the countryside looking for work, ensuring that factories can "dump" labor easily, despite tight government restrictions. "They just force us to take an unpaid leave and to sack those workers who they had hired through contractors," said Bhagat. "There's no one to speak up for us."