In the spring of 2015 and 2016, SACOM conducted undercover investigations inside four of Zara, H&M, and GAP’s supplier factories in China. Despite three brands’ CSR policies appear to be comprehensive and enable them to proclaim ethical, SACOM’s investigation reveals remarkable disparity between the brands’ supplier factory CSR Policies and the reality in their Chinese supplier factories.

Based on the investigation, Zara, H&M, and GAP’s CSR policies are proved to be empty promises and are not beneficial to workers at all. Though brands employ staff and partner with other external auditing firms to conduct plenty of audits every year, SACOM’s investigation unveils that supplier factories guided workers to lie to auditors and prepared fake documents to cover up the issues in working condition.