WRC Factory Investigation

Glory Industries Ltd.

Factory: Glory Industries Ltd.

Key Buyers: Carter’s, Gymboree, Li & Fung, OshKosh

Last Updated: 2021

Case Summary

The apparel industry’s chronically low wages left most garment workers with no savings on the eve of the Covid-19 crisis. Since most governments in apparel exporting countries provide little or no unemployment benefits, the only thing standing between an out-of-work garment worker and immediate poverty for her family are the legally mandated severance benefits that most garment workers are due upon termination.

Research by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) reveals that many garment workers who were fired during the pandemic have been denied some or all of this essential compensation, in violation of the law and the labor rights obligations of the brands and retailers whose clothes they sewed.

Glory Industries is one of the 31 export garment factories identified in the WRC’s report, Fired, Then Robbed: Fashion brands’ complicity in wage theft during Covid-19, which still owed workers legally mandated terminal compensation as of April 2021. In October 2020, Glory Industries dismissed 600 workers when it closed. As of April 2021, these workers were still waiting for $175,500 in legally owed compensation.

Glory Industries Ltd., a sewing facility located at Plot 7/A, Sholosahar Light Industrial Area, Bayazid Bostamy, Nasirabadh, Chattogram, Bangladesh, was part of the Sunman Group. Mapped in Bangladesh lists Carter’s, Gymboree (owned by The Children’s Place), Li & Fung, and OshKosh B’gosh (owned by Carter’s) as buyers. Mapped in Bangladesh (MiB) is a research initiative of Brac University, focused on transparency in the country’s garment sector. The initiative uses information from multiple sources (government data, employer records accessed via onsite visits, employer surveys, etc.) to identify and publicly report buyer-supplier relationships.

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