At about the same time as reports arrived about Ivanka Trump creating a fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs, the president’s daughter is dealing with some bad news surrounding her own brand. According to The Washington Post, a factory in China that’s known to be routinely used by Ivanka’s brand is under scrutiny for paying workers as little as $62 for 60-hour work weeks.
Via the report, G-III Apparel Group — an Ivanka Trump brand contractor that was recently in the news for relabeling Ivanka-branded dresses and passing them off as other brands at Stein Mart locations — employed over 80 workers at the factory to make Ivanka-brand clothing since 2012, including her branded shoes. Workers at the Xuankai Footwear Ltd. factory were reportedly pushed so hard to work long hours, many of them quit. The Washington Post adds that not only were workers working grueling hours for very little money, but payments were often delayed by management; and workers were only granted, at a maximum, two days of rest per month.
The report comes at an inopportune time for Trump as she hits the road to promote her Father’s “America First” agenda and promote her new Women Who Work book that hits stores next week. The report of bad conditions in Chinese factories also arrives, quite coincidentally, after the country approved three new trademarks for her brand on the same day she dined with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
(Via The Washington Post, Axios, and The Chicago Tribune)