Holding corporations accountable. Protecting worker rights.

Disastrous Outcome on Wages Made Worse by the Price Workers Are Paying for Speaking out

Reinstatement Offers, Compensation, and Safety Improvements at Collegiate Apparel Supplier in Bangladesh

Nike Defends Factory That Didn’t Pay Wages; Claims Thousands of Workers Freely Chose to Go Unpaid

If that sounds unbelievable, it is. The factory stole workers’ wages. Three years later, it still won’t pay them.

How we work

Enforceable standards

In global manufacturing, regulation usually means self-regulation, with brands inspecting their own suppliers under voluntary standards. The WRC promotes and enforces binding labor standards, the only kind that ever work in the real world.

Worker-Centered investigations

We interview workers away from their factories, without management’s knowledge, so workers can speak openly, with no fear of reprisal. This enables the WRC to uncover labor abuses that brands and their auditing organizations routinely ignore.

Full restitution for rights violations

The WRC compels brands and their suppliers around the world to remedy the abuses we’ve exposed: we’ve achieved tens of millions of dollars in back pay, reinstatement for thousands of unjustly fired workers, and transformative safety improvements.

Systemic change in supply chains

Achieving decent conditions in supply chains requires systemic reform: supplanting voluntary industry promises with enforceable agreements worldwide and obliging brands to end the price pressure on suppliers that impels abuses. We drive strategies to advance this agenda.

Three Years Later, Workers at Nike Supplier Are Still Owed over $800,000

Hong Seng Knitting continues to refuse to provide back pay to more than 99 percent of the affected workers and continues to refuse to pay meaningful compensation to the Burmese migrant worker who was forced to flee the country after management reported him to the police…

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First Pakistan Building Inspections Indicate Deadly Fire Hazards Are Widespread

The complex work of formally registering the Pakistan Accord as an entity able to operate in Pakistan is complete. This was an important hurdle, now cleared, which will allow vital safety inspections to commence. The urgent need for the Accord program in Pakistan is underscored by the results of pilot safety assessments already conducted by the Accord in seven Pakistani garment and textile factories.

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El Monte Workers

Thai El Monte Garment Workers Inducted into US Labor Hall of Honor

Twenty-eight years ago last month, consumers opened their newspapers to learn that sweatshops had returned to the US apparel industry, on domestic soil, under conditions unheard of in nearly a century. In August 1995, more than 70 Thai migrant workers were found to be sewing garments sold by major US retailers, under slave labor conditions,…

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WRC Statement in Response to Murder of Shahidul Islam

The WRC stands with the international labor rights community in mourning and condemning the devastating murder of longstanding union leader, Shahidul Islam of the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF). Our thoughts are with his wife and sons, and the union movement in Bangladesh that he tirelessly dedicated 25 years of his life to…

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