Undercover: The Refugees Who Make Our Clothes Panorama

On Panorama tonight...

Hang on. Look up, look up.

We go undercover to show how big fashion brands are profiting

from refugees and their children.

We find Syrian teenagers making clothes for one of Britain's

most treasured retailers.

That's Marks and Spencer.

That's an iconic British brand.

We discover how our clothes get made in child labour sweatshops.

Brands need to understand that they are responsible for the

conditions that the clothes are made in and it's not enough to say,

"We didn't know about this."

THEY SPEAK IN OWN LANGUAGE

And we meet the kids who to have to sew to survive.

Fast fashion has changed the way our clothes are made.

The big brands want to get the latest styles to the shops

as quickly as possible.

It means clothes have to be made closer to home -

and one country in particular is picking up a lot of business.

I'm feeling pretty pleased with myself because I've managed

to find a few bargains.

And these items here, well,

they all have one thing in common -

they've all been made in Turkey.

Turkey is on the edge of Europe,

so you might expect workers making your clothes

would be treated fairly.

But that's not always the case.

Problems for workers in Turkey are not new.

Some estimates put it at 60% of the workforce in Turkey being

unregistered, which obviously leads to exploitation,

because those workers don't have legal protections.

That has been a long-standing issue and this manifested itself often in

exploitation of female workers and, historically, also in child labour.

And now there's a new source of cheap labour in Turkey.

Refugees who have fled from neighbouring Syria.

We won't let them into Europe.

Now, almost three million Syrians are living in Turkey.

Hardly any have the right to work, so thousands work illegally

in the clothing industry, where they're often exploited.

We've spoken to dozens of Syrian refugees working here

and, without exception, they speak a pitiful wages and

terrible working conditions.

The thing is, they know they're being ripped off,

but they know they can do nothing about it.

Amina and her family fled Syria when their neighbourhood was bombed.

Her husband found work in the textile industry,

doing 13-hour shifts.

He dropped dead at work last year.

-Your husband died working, collapsed over his machine?

-Hmm.

-TRANSLATION:

-Certainly. This is how he died.

While he was working, he fell on the machine.

Do you remember when you found out that he was dead?

I didn't know what was happening to me.

I came running. I couldn't speak.

The factory paid £180 in compensation.

Now Amina says she has no choice but to send her three

oldest children out to work.

-TRANSLATION:

-Education is very important,

but human beings must eat so they can live.

They are forced to work, whether they like it or not.

It's a choice between life and death.

To find out what conditions are really like, we're going undercover.

It's more risky than usual.

Secret filming is illegal here

and Turkey has a reputation for jailing journalists.

'We're posing as the owners of a new fashion business.'

Thank you very much. I think...

'The owner of this factory, where denim is processed,

'says they work with all the big brands.'

Mango.

Oh, this one's Mango.

Ah, these are nice, actually.

Today, they are distressing jeans for Mango and Zara.

You can see the flames, as they burn holes in the denim with lasers.

Workers also spray hazardous chemicals to bleach the jeans.

They do this for 12 hours a day,

but most don't even have a basic facemask.

At least three of the workers are Syrian refugees.

The factory later told us that it was not employing refugees.

Mango says the factory was working as

a subcontractor "without Mango's knowledge".

It inspected and said that there were...

It didn't find any Syrian workers.

Zara's parent company, Inditex,

says its factory inspections are a...

It had already found "significant non-compliance"

in an audit in June.

It gave the factory until December to...

It's just before 8am.

I'm watching a street corner in the suburbs of Istanbul.

Syrian refugees come here to get hired.

So, you can see there, just across the street,

who we think is the middleman, selecting his crew for today's work.

Those who are picked, known as daily workers, are bussed to a factory.

We've got a contact among the Syrian refugees on board.

-TRANSLATION:

-Always there are Syrians there.

Sometimes as many as 20 people, according to the work required.

We follow the bus to see where they work.

The workforce is just jumping out there now.

It's a factory used by some of the world's biggest brands.

After their shift,

the workers are dropped back to the same neighbourhood.

They are paid in cash, without any payslips.

When I meet up with our contact,

I'm hoping he'll have proof of what clothes he is making.

Can I see the labels?

-TRANSLATION:

-I don't remember the names exactly,

as I don't know English, but I have the labels with me.

That's Marks & Spencer.

That's an iconic British brand.

One of the most famous in British retailing.

This brand, Marks & Spencer,

they are committed to producing

clothes only under the very best terms for workers.

Machines have all the rights.

If one breaks, they'll fix it straight away,

because they benefit from the machine.

But if anything happens to a Syrian,

they'll throw him away like a piece of cloth.

Our investigation is starting to get somewhere.

But the following night, this happens.

Elements of the Turkish army try to overthrow the government.

We film from the roof of our apartment.

GUNFIRE

-That's shots.

-That's shots.

SHOUTING

The coup collapses the next day...

GUNFIRE

..and the government later declares a state of emergency.

Thousands of people have been arrested.

There are huge pro-government rallies every night.

We're stopped by the police four times in four days.

We're worried they'll find our secret cameras.

Our night-time journeys back into the centre of Istanbul

have become a little edgy.

A few nights ago, we were pulled over by the police

and given the third degree.

They wanted to see everyone's documentation and they even

went so far as to start taking photographs of the van.

Vitally, though,

what they didn't do is they didn't poke through our equipment.

Marks & Spencer has not found a single Syrian refugee

working on its clothes.

But we found seven in our one factory.

-My name is Darragh.

-My name is Jarragh.

-Darragh.

-Diarragh.

-Dar-ragh.

-Darragh.

-Hey, I love it!

Some of them are teenagers and the youngest is just 15.

You're 15?

You should still be at school.

-TRANSLATION:

-Yes, I would love to be at school.

If you don't work, you have no money.

Simple as that.

In Turkey, if you don't work, you don't eat.

This 15-year-old boy has been working more than 12 hours

a day, ironing M&S clothes before they're shipped to the UK.

Some of the workers are paid a basic wage of little more

than a pound an hour.

That's well under the Turkish legal minimum.

All of this is a complete breach of M&S's own code of conduct.

-Thank you. Thank you very much.

-My pleasure.

-Shukran.

-Shukrand?

-Shukran.

-Shukran.

In Arabic? Thank you.

Marks & Spencer said our findings were "extremely serious"

and "unacceptable to M&S".

It's "offering permanent legal employment" to any

Syrian daily workers.

M&S says...

All the companies in this programme say suppliers have

to meet their standards,

and they conduct unannounced inspections to guarantee this.

But our M&S workers tell us these audits don't work.

When the auditors arrive,

they are hidden out of sight.

-TRANSLATION:

-When the auditors come, the bosses know.

When there is an inspection, they take us out to the street.

-TRANSLATION:

-If they saw us, it would make problems for the company.

Has that happened actually at this plant where you're

working right now?

Three times. We hid in the street from ten till six.

Isn't that right?

Yeah, ten till six.

This practice of cheating the auditors is hardly a secret.

We learned of it after a matter of days.

And if we know, you would think the brands should, too.

The auditing process and auditing industry that's grown up has failed.

A lot of brands will acknowledge this,

that they know that the model is not working and it's not enabling

them to detect serious abuse.

Even the Ethical Trading Initiative, which works with brands,

has it doubts.

Is the auditing process fit for purpose?

The audits work very well in certain circumstances,

but you need to complement audits

with collaboration, with investigation,

working with trade unions - which is what ETI is all about -

and making sure you have a better understanding

of what's actually happening than audits alone will provide.

There are thousands of Syrian children working across the city.

Here we go.

We visit 22 factories in Istanbul.

And there are kids in most of them.

These children look no more than seven or eight years old.

They're making boxer shorts for the Turkish market.

And in another cramped basement sweatshop,

we find these kids working on jumpers.

Before I came here, I thought it was going to be difficult to

find children at work making clothes.

That just tells you how naive I was. They're everywhere,

in particular, in workshops,

basement workshops like the one behind me,

and they're all across the city.

WOMAN SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

It's 7am, and 13-year-olds Oday and Rasha have to get up.

Their mum struggles to wake them each morning.

They're exhausted from working 60-hour weeks.

They're from a small village outside Aleppo.

It's where they grew up and went to school.

But this morning, Oday has to look for a new job...

..while Rasha is heading off for another shift.

They earn about 70p an hour,

and their family relies on their wages to survive.

Oday spends the morning looking for work.

When I catch up with him later,

he's struggling to put a brave face on bad news.

What will you do now?

You have no work, what will you do now?

You are a brave man, doing your best for your family.

So how do children end up making our clothes?

We want to show how it happens by looking at a single factory.

Hazar Tekstil works for many leading brands.

Its website names Next and the online giant ASOS.

The factory tells us most of its work comes from these two companies.

We ask to see a recent order they have worked on.

And they bring us a set of Next pyjamas with a distinctive pattern.

Next later told us that it stopped using Hazar in December.

It says the pyjamas were made by another supplier,

but that Hazar may have been asked to make a sample.

The supply chain is complicated.

Hazar doesn't actually make most of its orders.

It uses subcontractors.

So we don't believe, in this factory here,

you'll find any Syrian refugees or Syrian children working.

But we know that when you visit the subcontractors, you'll find

the Syrian refugees, and you may very well find Syrian children.

And for us to find out who and where the subcontractors are,

we have to follow those vans.

But that's the truck just ahead of us there now.

Istanbul isn't the easiest place to follow a vehicle.

It's bloody difficult trying to follow this truck in this traffic.

Should I go down that way? I'll go that way.

It's not that way, we can see that way.

No, I think we missed it. We lost it.

OK, eyes peeled. See it? I see it, yes, I see it.

OK, back on its tail now.

Thought we'd lost it there for a while.

We follow Hazar's vans over several days to find

its network of subcontractors.

One of the vans takes us to this workshop.

We ask to see something they've been working on.

These are lovely, this is very good quality, it's...

'The label says Next. It's the same pyjamas we were shown at Hazar.'

Are they stitching this from the cut pieces?

Next later told us that both factories may have been

overselling when they claimed to work for Next.

It also said that...

..and that they do not indicate that production

took place in the factory.

The factory owner then tells us they are also making ASOS clothes.

On the factory floor, we find Turkish children working.

This girl is 14.

And this girl is just ten years old.

The factory later tells us the children were only here

because they were being looked after by relatives in the school holidays.

But our secret filming shows they were working.

And there are Syrian refugees working here too.

Syria?

Syria?

Ah.

The factory says they are not exploited.

And both the factory owner and Hazar now deny making clothes for Next.

ASOS told us it didn't know its clothes were being made here,

as it's...

It says it has since inspected and found five Syrian adults

working illegally, but...

Worker exploitation of any kind, particularly child labour...

But critics say retailers ARE at fault.

Their demand for cheaper production leads to corners being cut.

For every product, there's a price below which it's impossible

to produce that product in a safe and responsible fashion.

Right now the prices that factories are getting for their products

across the garment industry are below that threshold in many cases.

The retailers all deny this,

but the Ethical Trading Initiative recognises there is a problem.

This is a sector which has serious problems around margins

and pushing the race to the bottom across various different countries.

Is there a simple answer when there are

so many brands sourcing from so many suppliers? No.

Is there a recognition there's a problem and some effort

to try and change that? Yes.

By following their delivery trucks,

we've uncovered a second subcontractor used by Hazar.

We're keeping watch outside.

Hang on, look up, look up.

We see a child loading up another of Hazar's delivery vans.

He's obviously working.

But we need to get inside to find out what's actually going on.

Immediately, we spot something interesting.

A Hazar label on a jacket.

And if you take a look at the label,

this item is being made for ASOS.

The owner isn't keen on us visiting the factory floor.

And this may be why.

The first worker we see is the boy we witnessed loading the Hazar van.

ASOS says it has never found a child worker

in its approved factories in Turkey.

But there are Syrian children here.

We are identifying them because ASOS has offered

to financially support any child workers

so they can return to school.

ASOS says this is not an approved factory,

but it accepts its clothes were made here.

When it inspected, it found three Syrian children under 16,

but we think there are more.

ASOS says it will also pay all the adult refugees it found and...

The company says it is doing this...

The main factory, Hazar...

The retailers all say exploitation is unacceptable

and the situation in Turkey is complex.

But our investigation shows that the brands don't always know

how or where their clothes are being made.

Are there bad practices in the industry? Absolutely.

Is there a need for change? Absolutely.

There are many criticisms which are justified of the industry,

but I think there needs to be a recognition that some are

trying to change those dynamics.

Brands need to understand that they are responsible

and it's not enough to say,

"We didn't know about this, it's not our fault."

They have a responsibility to monitor and understand where

their clothes are being made

and what conditions they're being made in.

In Turkey, too many brands simply don't know who is

making their clothes, and until they do, Syrian refugees and children

will continue to be exploited.