Sunday, June 13, 2010

The sweet stink of capitalist success

SOYMB reads that workers at Pragati Glass factory in India have been paid just 26p an hour to make perfume bottles for the glamour model Katie Price, better known as Jordan.The average take-home pay of 141 rupees, about £2.05 per day, would barely even cover the cost of buying food. She is estimated to be worth £30m. Pragati's factory is in Kosamba in the state of Gujarat, where nearly one third of the population live below the national poverty level.

Marketed under the name "Stunning", the first perfume she launched sells in Superdrug for £19.99 for a 50ml bottle. Price's second perfume, "Besotted", which also sells for £19.99 for a 50ml bottle. The perfume itself is often the cheapest part of the package, accounting for as little as 3% of the overall cost for the cheaper fragrances. The profit margin on a celebrity perfume can be as high as 95%. Price's price for the complete boxed and bottled package they were charged £342 for 1,000 bottles –34p each.

An in-depth study by the Ambekar Institute for Labour Studies in Mumbai examined the cost of living in India for industrial workers. The monthly living wage in Gujarat, the study concluded, was 6,757 rupees (£98).A Pragati worker putting in six days a week at the factory earns the equivalen of £49 per month. Food costs alone would consume all but £1.22 of that.

1 comment:

pete21 said...

Superdrug have pulled Katie Price's perfumes from its stores, for 'ethical' reasons.

"The 32-year-old star's perfumes have been dropped from the shelves of Superdrug after the story broke that the Indian factory that makes the scents paid their workers well below minimum wage"

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/showbiz/article-23845450-katie-price-perfume-pulled-from-superdrug-for-ethical-reasons.do