Gethin Chamberlain, for the Sunday Mirror, 18 December 2016<\/p>\n
Theresa May\u2019s \u00a3995 leather trousers are made in a Turkish factory by workers paid as little as \u00a31.49 an hour.<\/p>\n
The Prime Minister\u2019s luxury Amanda Wakeley desert pants last week triggered a spat between No10 and former Tory Education Secretary Nicky Morgan.<\/p>\n
Ms Morgan was barred from Downing Street after saying she would be unable to look her constituents in the eye if she had spent \u00a3995 on a garment.<\/p>\n
But it later emerged Ms Morgan herself owns a leather Mulberry handbag that currently sells for \u00a3950.<\/p>\n
A Sunday Mirror investigation can reveal both items are produced in Turkey by workers expected to toil 10 hours a day while earning well below a living wage.<\/p>\n
It would take all their pay for three months to buy either item.<\/p>\n
Our reporters tracked down the back-alley factory in Istanbul\u2019s leather district where the PM\u2019s luxury trousers are made.<\/p>\n
The Pasha Leather workshop is tucked away in the rundown G\u00fcng\u00f6ren district, where pay is as low as \u00a3297 a month.<\/p>\n
For the 10-hour day that is common in Turkey\u2019s garment trade, that is just \u00a31.49 an hour.<\/p>\n
And it means that, despite the back-breaking work, many of those producing high-end goods for Western shoppers will spend their lives in abject poverty.<\/p>\n
Engin Celik, national organiser for the Deriteks union, said some cannot even feed their families \u2013 and those who complain are fired on the spot.<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cThere are 90,000 leather workers in Turkey, and only 2,500 are union members. Firms employ undocumented workers more and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey are paid cash-in-hand and as soon as anybody tries to join a union they are sacked. Workers have no rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Engin said UK designers look to Turkey for the cheap labour \u2013 and \u201cto take \u00adadvantage of employees who are not able to stand up for their rights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ms Morgan ended up having her own hide tanned after blasting the trousers worn by the PM for a newspaper interview.<\/p>\n
After learning of the cost, she said: \u201cMy barometer is always, \u2018How am I going to explain this in Loughborough market?\u2019 I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever spent that much on anything apart from my wedding dress.\u201d<\/p>\n
But after critics pointed out her high-end handbag, the row became so embarrassing that she pulled out of Friday\u2019s episode of BBC comedy Have I Got News For You.<\/p>\n
Producers then replaced her on comic Paul Merton\u2019s team \u2013 with a handbag.<\/p>\n
Ms Morgan\u2019s bag is understood to have been made 12 years ago. We discovered the same model being produced in Turkey, in a factory used by upmarket label Mulberry.<\/p>\n
The SF Leather plant, in Izmir, northern Turkey, recently fired 14 workers for joining the Deriteks garment workers\u2019 union.<\/p>\n
The minimum legal wage in Turkey is 1,300 Turkish lira (\u00a3297) but labour rights group the Clean Clothes Campaign claim workers need \u00a3900 a month to survive.<\/p>\n
Workers at the SF Leather factory in Izmir making handbags for Mulberry are paid \u00a3343 a month \u2013 and were stunned to find out the retail price.<\/p>\n
Mehmet Cin, 41, one of the staff sacked by the factory, told the Sunday Mirror up to five hours\u2019 overtime was often imposed.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cWe decided to try and join a union because we looked online and saw how much the bags were sold for.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of them could pay three of our salaries for a month.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were making 300 or 400 of them in a day, getting paid next to nothing for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mulberry posted an operating profit of \u00a36.1million this year.<\/p>\n
Mehmet added: \u201cI have a wife and two children, but I can barely afford to put the kids into school and pay the rent.<\/p>\n
\u201cNormally we started work at 7.15am and did not finish until 5.15pm. With some of the overtime we were forced to work I didn\u2019t leave until 10.15pm some nights.\u201d<\/p>\n
Abdulhalim Demir, of the Turkish Clean Clothes Campaign, said the factory makes around 8,000 handbags for Mulberry every month. But he said: \u201cWhen they join the union to ask for higher wages they are fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cMulberry does nothing. What message does this send to their rich customers?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Gethin Chamberlain, for the Sunday Mirror, 18 December 2016 Theresa May\u2019s \u00a3995 leather trousers are made in a Turkish factory by workers paid as little as \u00a31.49 an hour. The Prime Minister\u2019s luxury Amanda Wakeley desert pants last week triggered a spat between No10 and former Tory Education Secretary Nicky Morgan. Ms Morgan was barred<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2038,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,35],"tags":[307,126,91,128,116,149,306,142,308,237],"class_list":["post-2037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-investigations","category-news","tag-amanda-wakeley","tag-ethical","tag-ethical-trading","tag-fashion","tag-human-rights","tag-labour-rights","tag-living-wage","tag-minimum-wage","tag-mulberry","tag-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gethinchamberlain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}