[London: 23 July 2026]: A new report by non-profit UK labour rights organisation, Labour Behind the Label, has revealed that global fashion brands, including Levi’s, Next, H&M, Gap, Carrefour and Primark, are using a broken billion-dollar audit system that is systematically silencing garment workers in Pakistan despite widespread evidence of labour abuses in the sector.
Credit KhalidMahmood
The 43 page report, entitled “Silenced: How wage ‘compliance’ is failing workers in Pakistan,” examines conditions in factories supplying 15 major international fashion brands.
It identifies serious shortcomings in current audit models that brands use to oversee labour standards in their supply chains. These audit models are repeatedly failing to detect labour abuses in Pakistan’s garment sector.
The report draws on the testimonies of 255 workers across eight factories in Pakistan and documents widespread experiences of unlawful wages, excessive working hours, harassment, bullying, surveillance and intimidation.
It uncovers that workers are being silenced when they try to report systematic underpayment and exploitation. Fear and retaliation are built into factory grievance systems so workers cannot report abuse without risking disciplinary action, including loss of earnings or dismissal.
A worker interviewed from the Artistic Milliners factory in Karachi, who supply Zara owner, Inditex, said: “We all know, if you file a complaint, you will be terminated.”
One group of around 50 workers were reportedly dismissed in January 2026 after raising concerns about unpaid bonuses at Combined Fabrics in Lahore, which produces garments for Levi’s.
The investigation also found multiple instances of grievance mechanisms that workers viewed as unsafe, inaccessible and ineffective. In some factories, complaint boxes are placed directly beneath surveillance cameras. In other cases, “internal hotlines,” where workers can report issues, are positioned in full view of factory management and colleagues, making anonymity effectively impossible.
One worker interviewed for the investigation said: “They abuse us, intentionally touch us, with words and physically. If we react, they will not count the piece work we are doing, so we continue.”
The garment and textile sector accounts for roughly 60% of Pakistan’s total exports and employs 15 million people in the full national supply chain, making it a vital driver of the national economy. Persistently high inflation, which has soared to 11.7% this year, has eroded real wages, placing an additional strain on workers and households.
Alongside a culture of fear at the factories, the report also exposes a broken auditing system at the heart of the fashion industry.
International fashion brands are using inadequate, periodic and inconsistent social auditing to monitor labour conditions in their supply chains. The investigation finds that when workers do report abuse to auditors, it is ignored or systematically unrecorded because audits prioritise paperwork over people. Even when workers do manage to report abuses, the findings cannot be included unless they can be backed by concrete evidence, which is rarely possible due to suppliers providing contradictory evidence.
The investigation found evidence suggesting that some factories actively manipulate audits. Auditors described temporary workers being removed before inspections, factories coaching workers, manipulating documentation and even selecting audit firms they believe will give favourable outcomes. The role of the audit closing meeting and the need for factories to sign off on findings was also identified as a major barrier to including worker testimonial evidence. One auditor said: “Suppliers know how to play the game. Often the factory is so smart, it outsmarts us.”
According to the report, most of the international brands do the bare minimum to comply with local laws and international standards. They continue to employ an auditing system that is widely understood to fail to reflect real working conditions rather than pushing for change.
Anna Bryher, Policy Lead for Labour Behind the Label said: “Fashion is facing a credibility crisis. For far too long, international brands have relied on tick-box compliance and superficial audit systems that fail to capture the realities experienced by workers in Pakistan. The legitimacy of how brands say they can source from low-wage production countries where exploitation is rife is at stake.
“A culture of fear cannot be fixed by policies alone – it requires listening to workers and making their testimony central to how their rights are protected. Real remedy must place workers and trade unions at the centre of efforts to ensure workers have a meaningful voice in improving their workplaces.”
Khalid Mahmood, Director of Labour Education Foundation Pakistan, said: “If brands are serious about responsible business, they must move beyond audit-driven compliance and invest in systems that guarantee freedom of association and place workers at the centre of monitoring and remediation. Workers are not just beneficiaries of due diligence – they are its most credible source of evidence. As long as workers are denied freedom of association and a genuine voice, brands will keep hearing what factories want them to hear instead of what workers are forced to endure.”
Labour Behind the Label has shared the findings with the major international brands included in the report. In response, some including Lidl and Carrefour have commissioned “a third party” to assess the findings.
The new report follows Labour Behind the Label’s 2023 report, ‘Hanging on By a Thread’, which reported that minimum wage violations were common, working hours were excessive, and a large majority of workers did not have proper proof of employment.
Full report available here, which includes the brands’ responses: http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/report-silenced-pakistan