News

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...

Guatemalan Factory That Produced Lucky Brands, American Eagle, Hanesbrands, and Gillz Closed Owing Workers $1.4 Million in Severance

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...

More Justice, Less Fear, at Adidas Supplier in Cambodia

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...

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

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…

Read More...
Garment workers in a crowd, many hands raised.

Bangladesh Minimum Wage Negotiations Put Brands’ Living Wage “Commitments” to the Test

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...

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.

Read More...
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,…

Read More...

Leading Apparel Brands Tolerated Delivery Delays Resulting from Türkiye Earthquake; but Most Have Done Little Else to Support Survivors

New research shows that many apparel giants failed to take appropriate steps to protect suppliers and workers, leaving 48% of factories unable to pay employees in full after quake  A white paper by the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) examines how 16 global brands handled their human rights obligations after the devastating earthquake in Türkiye: Pressed…

Read More...

Gap Inc. Signs Pakistan Safety Accord in US Breakthrough for Binding Brand-Labor Agreements

Workers in Gap Inc.’s 14 Factories in Pakistan Will Now Benefit from the Accord’s Unparalleled Fire and Building Safety Protections The Worker Rights Consortium applauds Gap Inc. (Athleta, Banana Republic, Gap, Old Navy) for signing the Pakistan Accord on Health & Safety in the Textile & Garment Industry and encourages other US brands to join…

Read More...

One Year Back Pay, Rehiring for Haitian Workers Fired over Wage Protest

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...