The United States has blocked imports from the world’s largest manufacturer of rubber gloves just as healthcare workers face a new wave of coronavirus cases in some states.

US Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday imposed a “restraining order” on two subsidiaries of Malaysian Top Glove Corp. due to evidence of forced labor in their factories.

Malaysia produces about two-thirds of the world’s disposable rubber gloves, an essential piece of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers on the front lines of the battle to stem the tide of the novel coronavirus pandemic. Top Glove alone manufactures around 20% of the gloves in the world.

“Evidence reveals multiple International Labor Organization indicators (…) of forced labor, including debt bondage, excessive overtime, retention of identity documents and abusive working and living conditions US Customs and Border Protection said in a statement.

The ban on shipments, he added, “sends a clear and direct message to US importers that the illicit, inhumane and exploitative practices of modern slavery will not be tolerated in US supply chains.” .

CBP said it was aware of the critical need for rubber gloves during the pandemic and that the Top Glove ban “will not have a significant impact on total US imports of this type of glove.”

Top Glove played down the impact of the lockdown on the business, noting that it was a seller’s market for glove makers, with cases of COVID-19 continuing to rise in the United States and elsewhere.

“Other countries can accept these orders easily,” the company’s executive chairman Lim Wee Chai told reporters in Malaysia on Thursday evening.

“We also have other plans if the United States does not allow the cargo to enter their country,” he added, citing Brazil, which now has the second most confirmed case of COVID-19. to the world, as a potential alternative.

The block also does not cover all imports of Top Glove into the United States. The company said the United States made up a quarter of its total sales, and the two subsidiaries affected by the restraint order made up only half of those.

Labor rights groups said this raised fears the company would circumvent the ban.

Independent labor rights advocate Andy Hall said there would be “close monitoring by multiple stakeholders across [Top Glove] sites to see if orders are staggered to bypass CBP “hold release order and keep exports to the United States stable using other subsidiaries.

Even so, he added, Top Glove “will find it difficult to avoid the impact of the ban given the seriousness of the challenges the company’s reputation currently faces.”

CBP did not respond to a request for clarification on the reasons for the company’s blocking of imports. But Top Glove, reacting to the ban, said in a statement that it could be linked to the recruitment fees that many of its migrant workers pay to middlemen to land jobs at its factories.

Malaysia’s rubber glove industry operates thanks to an army of migrant workers from the region’s poorest countries, drawn by the promise of higher wages than those offered in the country. Along the way, many end up getting into debt with recruiting agents who can charge up to $ 5,000 to set them up in a factory, leaving them virtually enslaved to their employers while they work on their payday loans. minimum.

Top Glove said it has already “solved” the problem among its migrant workers, with the exception of those who paid agents before 2019. But the company said it was working on a plan that could cost it up to $ 11. , $ 7 million to repay them and which she hoped to convince CBP to lift its import ban in a matter of weeks.

The U.S. agency imposed a similar import ban on another Malaysian rubber glove maker, WRP Asia Pacific, in September over similar forced labor issues, then lifted it in March, saying factories were then free from abuse of work.

Last month, the WRP launched a program to reimburse its migrant workers for their recruitment fees over the next two and a half years.

Hall said the US import ban on WRPs, the first for a Southeast Asian country, was intended as a warning to other glove makers in the country to settle their own scores with their migrant workers. He thinks most ignored him thinking the United States would not risk its rubber glove supplies during a pandemic, but expects more companies to reconsider, now that a second Malaysian company, considered an industry leader, has been affected.

“We should expect all glove companies to act quickly to remedy worker recruitment fees now to avoid further sanctions,” he said.