A New York City compliance alert to Victoria’s Secret over a local casting call has become a new front in the campaign over the death of a garment worker at a Sri Lankan supplier factory.
In an Aug. 20 notice to the company’s general counsel, Melinda McAfee, the New York City Commission on Human Rights cited Victoria’s Secret’s upcoming “Angels Among Us” fashion show in Los Angeles and the fashion industry’s broader history of abuse and sexual harassment of models. The commission reminded the company that job applicants, short-term hires and independent contractors in New York City are protected under the city’s anti-discrimination law, which can carry penalties of up to $250,000 per violation.
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Katherine Carroll, deputy commissioner of the commission’s Office of Civil Rights Enforcement, wrote that employers, managers and supervisors may not treat an employee, intern, independent contractor or applicant less favorably because of their actual or perceived immigration status. Nor may they subject workers to gender-based discrimination, including sexual harassment, directly or through a hostile work environment.
While the notice concerns hiring activity in New York, not conditions on the production floor, separate remarks from Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su, obtained by Sourcing Journal, cast the otherwise routine administrative action as an intervention with broader implications for the company’s supply chain.
In her accompanying statement, Su linked New York City’s “firm commitment” to protect workers from gender-based violence, harassment and discrimination to the case of Paramasivam Pushpalatha, a 44-year-old sewing operator whose death last October was followed, advocates say, by threats of violence against her colleagues.
Paramasivam’s death has fueled a vigorous protest campaign by the Commercial and Industrial Workers Union, Asia Floor Wage Alliance, Global Labor Justice and other groups. Organizers say they want Brandix and Victoria’s Secret to accept accountability, including by providing financial remediation to her family, commissioning an independent investigation into management practices and entering into binding—meaning enforceable—agreements to protect supply chain workers from gender-based violence, harassment and retaliation.
In June, union leaders converged on Victoria’s Secret’s flagship store in Manhattan carrying signs that read “No More Secrets” and “Women Are Watching.” A banner featuring Paramasivam’s face, set against historical scenes of garment-worker protests, declared: “New York Never Stops Fighting for Garment Workers.”
“When Pushpalatha’s life was sacrificed in a Brandix factory for production targets, the CIWU started a campaign seeking justice for her family,” Swasthika Arulingam, president of the union, said in a statement. “Pushpalatha’s family and the union have faced threats and intimidation from Brandix because we refused to allow this injustice to pass. When we heard ‘Justice for Pushpa’ from the streets of New York, we realized that, just as suppliers and brands build their empires of exploitation globally, we as workers and unions are also building our solidarity globally to stand up, resist and fight.”
A Victoria’s Secret spokesperson said the brand takes its human-rights responsibilities seriously and will continue to comply with applicable laws. The company had also engaged with Brandix to understand the circumstances surrounding Paramasivam’s death and independently assessed available information while awaiting an as-yet-unreleased report from the Sri Lanka Human Rights Commission. The review found no evidence of wrongdoing by Brandix, the spokesperson added. Brandix, too, has maintained that it followed proper procedure and that the tragedy had nothing to do with workplace conditions.
The garment worker cause is one Su has long championed. Before serving as U.S. labor secretary under President Joe Biden, she was the lead attorney in a 1995 case involving 72 Thai nationals who were found to be working in conditions of slavery at a makeshift garment factory in El Monte, Calif., just east of L.A.
And at an online event hosted by AFWA and GLJ in March, Su asked participants to say Paramasivam’s name aloud.
“The city takes pride in its long history of women garment workers standing up for their rights,” Su said. “In light of this legacy, the recent worker death and intimidation in a Sri Lankan Brandix factory that makes Victoria’s Secret products are tragic and concerning. We hope the letter from the NYC Commission on Human Rights is clear: Victoria’s Secret is welcome in the fashion capital, but it must fulfill its obligations to workers.”
New York City’s authority extends to hiring and recruitment activity conducted in the city. It has no jurisdiction over the L.A. runway show, let alone working conditions at an overseas factory. Even so, campaigners say the notice provides a pressure point for a company they say is deeply rooted in New York City.
“New York is materially and strategically central to the brand; it houses the company’s 60,000-square-foot flagship store, corporate offices where top decision-makers, including the CEO and brand presidents, are based,” said Prarthana Gurung, senior organizer at Global Labor Justice. “That’s why it’s so powerful to see city government taking notice of problems in Victoria’s Secret’s supply chain and connecting them to concern for all women workers from the factory to the runway.”
Gurung said the campaign will next head to L.A., “another strong union town with a history of standing up for garment workers.”
“We hope L.A. will also send Victoria’s Secret a message about how it needs to change the way it treats women workers and unions in its supply chain,” she said.
