Shein Vowed To Tackle Overwork In 2021, But New Report Claims 75-Hour Weeks Is Still Common

According to the investigation, apart from long working hours, the workers' wages had hardly changed since the 2021 report.

Over a year after Chinese fast-fashion company Shein promised to tackle overwork and excessive work hours in its supply chain, a new report claims that the firm still has a problem. According to an investigation by Public Eye, a Swiss human rights advocacy group that first highlighted the alleged abuse in the Chinese company in 2021, workers in some factories supplying Shein are still working 75-hour weeks. The probe found that “illegal working hours and piecework wages remain a typical feature of the everyday lives of the workers interviewed”. 

“The 75-hour weeks that we found out about two years ago still seem to be common at Shein,” the Swiss organisation said. 

Public Eye interviewed 13 employees at six factories in Guangzhou in 2023. It found that staff worked an average of 12 hours a day, excluding lunch and dinner breaks, and usually for six or seven days a week. “Shein does not reveal its suppliers,” the organisation said in its report. However, it added that it established that factories were Shein suppliers through interviewees' responses as well as the presence of Shein products.