Holding corporations accountable. Protecting worker rights.

Outerstuff to Provide $1.8 Million to Workers at Salvadoran Factory

After WRC exposes mass wage and severance theft at shuttered facility, buyer agrees to cover full back pay; workers made clothes with university, NFL, and Disney logos.

Underwear King Robert Ng Stole $5.9 Million from Low-Wage Workers in Thailand

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.

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…

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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…

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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…

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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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