After the Milan Public Prosecutor’s Office, the Prato Public Prosecutor’s Office is also moving to counter the exploitation of workers in Chinese clothing companies, which also enriches Italian principals. The difference with Milan is that in Prato, the principals are not big luxury brands such as Armani, Dior, Valentino, Loro Piana, but big fast fashion brands, low-priced fashion produced in 48 hours, which are being prosecuted for the first time.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Prato requested – and the Court of Florence granted – the preventive measure of judicial administration for the fast fashion company Piazza Italia…
From 2022 to the present day, according to the Prosecutor’s investigation, they outsourced a large part of the garment manufacturing to two Chinese companies in Prato that exploited the workers and forced them to work in inhuman conditions…
…The accusation, as was already the case in Milan, is that of having culpably facilitated the labour exploitation implemented by the two Chinese companies that followed one another in time at the same address. The ‘culpable inertia’ and ‘lack of vigilance’ refer to the fact of never having verified the real entrepreneurial capacity of the subcontracting companies that employed undeclared workers, clandestine workers exploited for hours, paid starvation wages, kept to eat and sleep in dilapidated environments…