$12 million in back pay at 19 collegiate factories

December 31, 2024

Dear Colleague,

As we reach the end of 2024, I want to share a few thoughts on the WRC’s partnership with universities and colleges and what it means to the workers who make collegiate apparel.

In short, it often means the difference between being able to support their families and losing everything.

Despite years of industry promises, and despite gains in some areas, the global apparel supply chain remains, all too often, a harsh and abusive place for workers.

Universities did not create this problem, but hundreds of thousands of workers, in dozens of countries, sew university-branded products. These workers are at risk – of their wages being stolen, their safety being compromised, their dignity being trampled.

Universities want the workers who make their logo goods treated fairly. That’s why universities founded and joined the WRC. When abuses happen, universities want them stopped and the harm remedied.

That is what the WRC does. Workers and organizations all around the world understand that when workers suffer abuses at a factory making collegiate products, they can call the WRC.

They know the WRC will hold the companies involved accountable. They know our team will work our butts off to set things right.

Cases where employers fail to pay legally mandated compensation when factories close are just one example, but a very important one.

Our first report to you in 2024 involved a factory in Haiti that closed without paying workers their final pay and severance – the equivalent of half a year of wages. The WRC got the workers paid.

Workers in Bangladesh called us when their factory failed to pay them an amount equal to five months’ wages. We got those workers paid, too.

When the Style Avenue factory collapsed, owing workers $1.8 million, the equivalent of two years of pay per worker, the WRC worked with universities to overcome major obstacles to remediation. And we got the Style Avenue workers paid.

Since 2022, the WRC has delivered $12 million in back pay at 19 collegiate factories in 11 countries, benefiting more than 20,000 workers. If the WRC had not intervened, these workers would never have seen the money they earned sewing university apparel. In many cases, the amount the WRC restored to them will be the largest single sum they and their families will receive in their lives.

It is hard to capture in words how proud I am to work with you, with colleagues at other WRC schools, and with the WRC team around the world to deliver these results for workers and for the university community.

A very happy new year to you and yours.

Best,

Scott