The WRC’s Impact

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May 24, 2016

Dear Colleagues,

At this link, you will find an infographic that summarizes—and quantifies—some of the WRC’s key labor rights accomplishments. We shared this at our annual University Caucus meeting on May 5 and received very positive feedback, so we want to provide it to all affiliates.

The document evaluates, in hard numbers, the impact of the WRC’s work over the life of the organization. It reports:

  • The total number of workers we have helped through our investigations
  • The amount of legally owed back pay that workers have received as a result of WRC intervention
  • The number of workers, fired illegally for trying to improve conditions at their factories, who have been reinstated through the WRC’s efforts
  • The number of people now working in safer factories as a result of the WRC’s work

The numbers are conservative. They are based on the WRC’s public reports and therefore don’t include cases where public reporting wasn’t warranted. They include only cases where the WRC played the central role in investigation and remediation; they don’t include broader, collaborative projects like the Bangladesh Accord (i.e., the safety figures exclude millions of workers whose factories have become safer under the Accord). The numbers on compensation don’t include the higher pay workers received, going forward, after factories were convinced to start paying the proper legal wage; they include only the back pay recouped. In other words, these numbers—which we think you will agree are impressive—actually understate the impact of our work.

We also shared several slides at the University Caucus meeting that dig deeper into the data, which you can access here. One slide compares the average annual fee for WRC affiliate universities to the amount of money we have returned to workers each year, on average, in cases where we uncovered and corrected wage or severance violations.

In our day-to-day work at the WRC, we focus primarily on immediate labor rights priorities: current cases where worker rights have been violated and where corrective action is needed. We don’t often take time out to reflect on past accomplishments. We recognize, however, that there is value in conducting an inventory of these accomplishments—most importantly, this can help universities quantify the impact of the work the WRC does on their behalf and, therefore, the value of WRC affiliation. That is why we created this infographic. We hope you find it useful.

Please feel free to share this information. And let us know if you have any thoughts or questions.

Best,

Scott

Scott Nova 
Worker Rights Consortium 
5 Thomas Circle NW, 5th Floor
Washington, DC 20005 
ph 202 387 4884 
fax 202 387 3292 
[email protected] 
www.workersrights.org