Skechers Supplier Named to Uyghur Forced Labor Blacklist
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security revealed Tuesday that it has added a Skechers supplier to a list of Chinese firms whose products can no longer enter the United States on suspicion of abetting the persecution of Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims in China through their participation in forced labor transfer schemes.
In a further sign that the DHS-led Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force is expanding the scope of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, or UFLPA, beyond the borders of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Dongguan Oasis Shoes Co. is housed in Guangdong, nearly 5,000 miles southeast of the controversy-riddled province, where allegations of crimes against humanity and even genocide have continued to proliferate despite Beijing’s fervid protestations that they are untrue. Products made in whole or in part in Xinjiang are automatically excluded until the law.
More from Sourcing Journal
According to information by FLETF, the footwear manufacturer also known as Dongguan Luzhou Shoes Co. and Dongguan Lvzhou Shoes Co., cooperated with the paramilitary Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps to recruit, transfer and employ Uyghurs from Xinjiang at its factory.
A July 2022 report from the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield-Hallam University noted that the XPCC started dispatching Uyghur and Kyrgyz farmers, herdsmen and industrial workers to Dongguan Oasis in 2016 as part of a “Xinjiang Aid” pairing between the cities of Tumshuq and Dongguan. By 2019, the factory had facilitated at least 270 such transfers. The same year, the Dongguan Human Resources Bureau reported that Tumshuq’s deputy mayor visited the facility to remind its Uyghur employees that “integration,” hard work and Chinese language skills would lead their families out of poverty.
When Globe and Mail journalist Nathan VanderKlippe and BBC journalist John Sudworth visited Dongguan Oasis in the spring of 2021, they found Uyghur workers’ housing fenced by barbed wire and patrolled by men in “police-style uniforms” who appeared to restrict access to the dormitories. Uyghur workers were also kept apart from Han and Hui employees, with their own line bosses, they found.
Skechers was first linked with Dongguan Oasis, then referred to as Dongguan Lv Zhou, in a February 2020 Australian Strategic Policy Institute report about the mass transfer of Uyghurs to factories in other parts of China under conditions that “strongly suggested” forced labor.
In a statement published in March 2021, Skechers said that it was unaware of the allegations before the ASPI report was made public but that it reviewed its internal records and confirmed that the supplier, which it referred to as Dong Guan Lu Zhou, had acknowledged its supplier code of conduct. Multiple audits, both announced and unannounced, between 2017 and 2020 also showed no signs of forced labor or other concerning labor conditions, it said at the time.
And while Uyghurs comprise a “portion of its workforce,” Dongguan Luzhou told the California-based shoemaker, they are “employed on the same terms and conditions as all other factory employees.” It was based on these facts, Skechers said, that it had “no reason to believe” that the factory was using any forced labor, though it would continue its monitoring.
Of Dongguan Oasis’s inclusion on the Entity List, a Skechers spokesperson said it was aware of the announcement and that “as always,” it will respect and follow DHS’s decision, though it does not expect the move to have a “material impact on our business.” The company declined to answer follow-up questions about whether it would be dropping Dongguan Oasis as a supplier, its production volume and if there were shipments that were already en route to the United States that might be diverted elsewhere.
Skechers’s ties with Dongguan Oasis have come back to haunt it before. It was the subject of a 2021 complaint that a group of nonprofits and a former Uyghur detainee filed with the public prosecutor’s office in Paris. Together with Zara owner Inditex, Uniqlo and Sandro and Maje parent SCMP, Skechers was accused of “encouraging and profiting” from Uyghur forced labor, whether directly or indirectly. The office dropped the investigation in 2023, citing its lack of jurisdiction.
In 2022, the Chinese Communist Party-run tabloid Global Times claimed that Customs and Border Protection had seized a Skechers shipment over a possible breach of the UFLPA. Skechers denied this.
Brooks Running also produced shoes at Dongguan Luzhou, though it ended its relationship at the close of 2022. A spokesperson declined to give a reason, saying only that the shoemaker has zero tolerance for forced labor and continuously evaluates its policies and practices “in response to global issues related to worker well-being and responsible sourcing.”
Speaking at a fireside chat with risk assessment firm Kharon on Wednesday, Robert Silvers, DHS undersecretary for policy and FLETF chair, said that the Entity List will “keep growing.” With Dongguan Oasis’s addition, it currently stands at 68 names. Uyghur forced labor, whether it occurs in or outside of Xinjiang, falls within FLETF’s purview, he said. Scrutiny buoyed by the work of a “very vibrant community” of NGOs and civil society organizations, plus supply-chain mapping software providers such as Kharon, will only become more intense.
“We have a very active and vibrant pipeline of additional referred cases that the Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force is reviewing closely and I would certainly expect more designations,” Silvers said. “Unfortunately, the problems of forced labor, of forced transfers of persecuted ethnic minorities in the People’s Republic of China continues and so our work will be unyielding [and] unrelenting until those conditions change, and they haven’t changed yet.”
Silvers warned companies of creating bifurcated supply chains that include a “clean” one for the U.S. market and an “unclean” one for everywhere else, a state of affairs that experts say will prevail unless other countries step up and adopt equally stringent forced labor rules. A similar situation could arise when brands source non-tainted materials or products from firms that also produce items that involve modern slavery.
“Where we see bifurcated supply chains, we ask a lot of questions, and we ask for really solid proof that there’s not commingling between the supply chains,” Silvers said. “And when you’re dealing with a supplier that is doing dirty work, but assuring you that you’re not part of that dirty work, that’s a red flag.”
Solve the daily Crossword
