Holding corporations accountable. Protecting worker rights.

WRC News

WRC’s Virtual Side Session at the 2025 OECD Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector

Wrongly Imprisoned Worker Acquitted; ASICS, MUJI Fail to Press Supplier to Compensate Worker

In retaliation against workers for organizing a union, the factory had their leader jailed on baseless charges. Despite being acquitted of all charges, ASICS and MUJI fail to press their supplier to fully remedy the violation of human and labor rights.

Hope Is Growing for Labor Rights Progress in Bangladesh

The country’s interim government told a US delegation it will undertake long overdue reforms, strengthening unions rights, and revisiting the country’s minimum wage.

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.

workers leaving factory during safety drill.

Backsliding Toward Disaster? The Power of Factory Owners over the RMG Sustainability Council Is Putting Workers’ Lives at Risk

Under the Bangladesh Accord, now the International Accord, garment factories in Bangladesh have made vast safety improvements since 2013, saving thousands of workers from injury or death. These gains are now under threat.

Read More...

$1.5 Million Wage Theft from Guatemalan Workers Who Made Lucky Brand Owned by Authentic and Shein

As the WRC reported previously, Industrial Hana, a garment factory in Guatemala, permanently closed operations in October 2023, without paying its approximately 250 employees $1.5 million in unpaid severance and other terminal benefits owed to them in accordance with Guatemalan law. The WRC’s investigation found that, in the months leading up to the factory’s closure,…

Read More...
Sewer

Hugo Boss—Heartless to Heart and Mind Workers, Workers Who Sewed for Brand at Thai Factory Denied Severance

Hugo Boss continues to refuse to ensure that workers who made its branded clothes receive their legally owed severance at Heart and Mind, a garment factory that was located in Nakhon Pathom, Thailand and permanently closed on December 3, 2017. Hugo Boss is one of the largest German clothing brands, achieving record sales of EUR 4.2 billion…

Read More...

Four Years Later, Workers at Nike Supplier Are Still Owed over $900,000

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…

Read More...