Scott Nova

Nova has initiated and helped negotiate groundbreaking enforceable agreements between global brands, labor unions, and NGOs to protect associational rights, combat workplace abuse, and secure life-saving safety renovations at garment factories. These enforceable pacts, involving such brands as H&M, Levi’s, Tommy Hilfiger and Fruit of the Loom, have brought documented improvements for millions of garment workers. 

Nova has worked with licensing directors and other administrators at universities across the US and Canada to enforce the binding labor rights obligations these institutions have placed on the apparel brands that make university logo clothing. He developed the WRC’s global enforcement program for university labor standards, which covers more than a thousand factories globally, fielding complaints from workers, documenting violations, and securing remedies. Nova has served as an expert resource on labor rights and corporate behavior in global supply chains for US government agencies, Congressional committees, socially responsible investors, trade unions, and others. He has spoken on these subjects to audiences across the U.S. and internationally and has been interviewed by a broad range of print and broadcast media. Nova has written for the New York Times, The Guardian, CNN, the Journal of Commerce, The Nation, Boston Review and other publications and news outlets and has contributed chapters to academic and popular volumes, including “Outsourcing Horror: Why Workers Are Still Dying, One Hundred Years After Triangle Shirtwaist,” in Achieving Worker Rights in the Global Economy. Nova holds a B.A. in Government from Dartmouth College.