A subcontractor for the top lingerie brand Victoria's Secret had six workers who protested against the slave-like conditions imprisoned on trumped up charges in Jordan, according to a US-based workers' rights watchdog.

DK Garments is a subcontract factory with 150 foreign guest workers, which has been producing Victoria's Secret garments for the last year, failed to provide them the necessary residency permits, and use their "illegal" status to abuse, harass and threaten them if they protest against the abuse they suffer, the National Labor Committee claimed.

The Victoria's Secret workers from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka toil 14 to 15 hours a day, from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 or 10:00 p.m., seven days a week, receiving on average one day off every three or four months, the New York-based organization said, adding that all overtime is mandatory, and workers are routinely at the factory 98 to 105 hours a week while toiling 89 to 96 hours.

Workers who fall behind on their production goals, or who make even a minor error, are routinely slapped and beaten, the group found.

Despite being forced to work five or more overtime hours a day, the workers are routinely shortchanged on their legal overtime pay, being cheated of up to $18.48 each week in wages due them, NLC alleged.

Workers are allowed just 3.3 minutes to sew each $14 Victoria's Secret women's bikini, for which they are paid four cents. The workers' wages amount to less than 3/10ths of one percent of the $14 retail price of the Victoria's Secret bikini, the Committee pointed out.

In early November 2007, when a new style of Victoria's Secrets women's underwear arrived, management set a mandatory production goal of 2,800 pieces per 10-hour shift for each assembly line of 22 sewers. It was almost impossible to reach this goal, as the workers were allowed just five minutes to sew each garment.

Then on November 11, management suddenly increased the production goal to 4,000 pieces in 10 hours, an increase of 1,200 garments--or 43 percent more--with no increase in wages. Now, in effect, each worker would have to sew 18.2 garments an hour, or one every 3.3 minutes, which was impossible. The workers protested the sudden, arbitrary increase. They wanted to speak with management, to explain how such an extreme production goal was not only unjust, but impossible to achieve.

Management responded by having six of the most outspoken workers protesting the sudden production goal increase imprisoned--apparently on trumped-up charges, the Committee alleged.

They are urging the public to show their displeasure at the treatment meted out to workers by writing to Leslie Wexner, CEO
Limited Brands Inc, the holding company of Victoria's Secret.