Oliver Holland, a solicitor at the law firm Leigh Day, sees no small amount of irony in Tesco’s support for mandatory human rights due diligence in the United Kingdom, with Britain’s largest supermarket operator having gone so far as to sign a joint letter last month lobbying the government for legislation to hold corporations accountable for labor exploitation in their supply chains.

Holland is, after all, representing 130 former Burmese migrant workers and one child in a landmark international human rights lawsuit brought in the U.K. High Court against Tesco and auditing firm Intertek Group.

Between 2017 and 2020, the adult claimants worked at V.K. Garment in Mae Sot, Thailand, where they cut, sewed and packaged jeans and jackets for the grocery giant’s F&F clothing line, intended for the domestic Thai market, while trapped in what they described as a “cycle of forced labor and debt bondage,” including grueling hours, poverty wages and hazardous conditions that “unjustly enriched” the defendants.

“When I was living in the compound, they deducted fees for my accommodation, rent, social security and passport/work permit renewal,” one worker said. “I had to borrow money for daily living costs, such as house rent, especially when our wages were late, from vendors and colleagues. I was always in debt—it was 20,000 [baht] ($598) in debt, plus the interest rate.

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