Jin Shun Inc. cheated its 100 immigrant (mostly Chinese) workers of $5.3 million. They typically worked 6 days per week for $3.79 an hour, far below the state’s $7.15-an-hour minimum wage. The Queens garment contractor handed out instructions to its workers telling them to give false answers about working conditions when government inspectors visited.

The workers were allowed only 30 minutes for lunch but were often subtracted an hour from their time cards. When the managers knew that monitors from private companies that bought Jin Shun’s apparel were to visit, they told the employees to take an hour, not 30 minutes, for lunch.

Spokespeople for Gap (including Banana Republic), Limited Brands (Victoria’s Secret), Coldwater Creek and Macy’s have all expressed their concern. Gap takes its monitoring responsibilities very serious and has more that 80 employees worldwide solely dedicated to improving the lives of garment workers. Macy’s and Coldwater Creek Inc have started their own internal investigations and Limited Brands stated there is a zero-tolerance policy towards “vendors and factories unwilling or unable to achieve compliance”.