Push to ‘Pay Up’ Stops Brands from Stealing Billions during Pandemic
The garment workers who make the clothes we wear were among the hardest hit by the economic catastrophe of Covid-19. Long-standing inequities in global apparel supply chains—from one-sided contracts that allow brands to cancel clothing orders their suppliers have already produced, to chronically low wages in factories producing for the world’s most lucrative apparel labels—made garment workers exceedingly vulnerable to the economic shocks of the Covid-19 pandemic.
As the virus, and government efforts to combat it, upended the global economy, garment factories around the world were hit by an estimated total of $40 billion in retroactive order cancellations by international brands (in other words, refusing to pay for clothing suppliers had already produced or were producing), as well as huge reductions in new orders. The result was widespread factory closures and mass layoffs, with myriad cases of nonpayment of legally mandated wages and severance. In effect, the actions of apparel brands and their suppliers pushed a disproportionate share of the pandemic pain onto the backs of workers.
The WRC led efforts to expose the malfeasance and press brands to pay. In coordination with other labor rights advocacy groups, we helped restore $22 billion in payments from brands to suppliers, including hundreds of millions for workers’ wages. These achievements created a precedent that has already helped stave off the worst consequences for textile and garment workers in other crises: for example, in the aftermath of the earthquake that hit southeastern Türkiye in February 2023, brands allowed for delivery delays without demanding discounts from their suppliers, and, when widespread civil society protests erupted in Bangladesh in July and August 2024 with hundreds of factories closing for several days, brands ensured their suppliers paid workers in full for those days and did not impose penalties for delivery delays.
While the WRC along with unions and other labor rights advocates accomplished much to staunch the worst economic impacts of the Covid-19 crisis, neither governments of wealthy nations nor the apparel brands that have long benefited from cheap labor took the initiative to step up to assist workers in manufacturing supply chains. The economic fallout of Covid-19, as demonstrated in the reports below, exacerbated existing inequities within global supply chains and revealed a production system that is badly broken—in terms of equity, labor rights compliance, and economic resilience. The need for fundamental reform has never been clearer.
