Commentary Archive
Industrial Hana, a garment factory in Guatemala, permanently closed operations in October 2023. The factory shuttered operations on October 5, violating Guatemalan labor law by failing to pay severance to its 229 employees. Workers at the factory reported that, prior to its closure, the factory produced garments, under subcontracting relationships with other local manufacturers, for…
Read More
Trax Apparel—a sportswear factory in Cambodia, disclosed as a supplier to Triform Custom Apparel, adidas’s licensee for collegiate apparel—has reinstated and provided legally owed back pay to workers whom the factory unlawfully dismissed in 2020, following a WRC investigation and subsequent engagement with adidas for corrective action. This case underscores the critical role of collegiate…
Read More
Brands are facing final calls to use their leverage to influence the wage outcome: brands should reject the wage proposal and publicly commit to increase prices to support a wage of US$215 per month during the official 14-day period for submission of objections, which ends November 26.
Garment workers are encountering systematic punishment and retaliation, including violence, arrests, terminations, and killings…
Poverty wages and high inflation, make substantial minimum wage increase for garment workers long overdue—international brands must take responsibility Impoverished garment workers in Bangladesh earning US$73 per month, while making apparel for top international brands, are calling for an increase in the country’s minimum wage to US$215 (23,000–25,000 Bangladesh taka, “BDT”) per month—a figure recent…
Read More
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.
Read More
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,…
Read More
After nearly a year of investigation and engagement by the WRC, Centri Group, a garment factory in Haiti that supplies the Canadian apparel company, Gildan Activewear, has committed to remedy violations of its workers’ fundamental right to freedom of association. As previously reported, a WRC investigation had found that, in 2022, Centri Group violated its…
Read More
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…
Read More আন্তর্জাতিক শ্রমিক অধিকার সম্প্রদায়ের সাথে একাত্ম হয়ে ‘শ্রমিক অধিকার সংঘ’ (Worker Rights Consortium, WRC) বাংলাদেশ গার্মেন্টস ইন্ডাস্ট্রিস ওয়ার্কার্স ফেডারেশনের (BGIWF) নেতা, শ্রমিক আন্দোলনের দীর্ঘদিনের বন্ধু শহীদুল ইসলামের নৃশংস হত্যায় শোক ও নিন্দা জ্ঞাপন করছে। তাঁর স্ত্রী ও ছেলেমেয়ে এবং বাংলাদেশের ট্রেড ইউনিয়ন আন্দোলনের বন্ধুদের মতো আমরাও এই মর্মান্তিক ঘটনায় শোকাহত ও সমব্যাথী; তাঁদের প্রতিও আমরা…
Read More
WRC Secures Five Months’ Wages in Unpaid Severance for Workers of Former Workwear Factory in Haiti
This past holiday season, former workers of Horizon Manufacturing, a garment factory in Haiti that made work uniforms for export to the United States, received more than $300,000 to correct nonpayment of severance they had been owed by the facility owner, since the factory closed in April 2022. Top workwear companies, Edwards Garment and Aramark…
Read More