“Made in Italy: shame in Italy,” chanted a handful of migrant labourers last week in Geneva, Switzerland, outside the flagship store of luxury accessory maker Montblanc, having travelled from Italy’s famed leatherwear region Tuscany.

Standing about 3km (two miles) from where Montblanc’s US$76 billion parent company Richemont was meeting shareholders, the workers – flanked by more than a dozen Italian and Swiss union officials – accused the pen and watch maker of dropping its supplier Z Production in 2023 because of rising costs.

The Chinese-owned contractor, based in Tuscany, had improved its working conditions in October 2022 after years of irregular contracts and long shifts, workers and union officials said.

“Montblanc ended the contract because we wanted to work eight hours a day, five days a week as legal workers,” said 23-year-old Zain Ali, from Pakistan. He worked for Z Production for two-and-a-half years, applying metal Montblanc logos to leather accessories. “They just wanted slaves.”

Z Production did not respond to a request for comment for this story. Montblanc said in a statement it had decided to terminate Z Production’s contract in early 2023 because its audits showed the contractor had failed to meet its standards as outlined in Richemont’s code of conduct for suppliers.