Metro Wear 2

The WRC’s investigation uncovered severe and persistent violations of workers’ associational rights, after establishing a union to address low pay, excessive production quotas, and unfair job evaluations at Metro Wear 2, a factory in the Philippines with a workforce of nearly 2,000 that makes university licensed clothing for lululemon.

Factory management violated its employees’ right to freedom of association by:

• Threatening workers with retaliatory plant closure, firing, and blacklisting if workers voted for union representation;
• Violating workers’ right to collective bargaining by refusing, for nearly a year, to honor the results of a democratic union election, overseen by the Philippine Government, in which workers voted overwhelmingly to join the new union;
• Firing five employees who were elected officers of the new union in retaliation for the decision of the factory’s workers to exercise their associational rights by unionizing; and
• Discriminatorily targeting the factory’s workforce for layoff, on account of employees’ decision to exercise their associational rights by voting for the union.

Followed by months of engagement with the factory, worker representatives, and lululemon to secure adequate remedies, the parent company of Metro Wear 2, Sports City International (SCI) committed to fully address the violations of university labor standards identified by the WRC. These include the reinstatement with back pay of the unlawfully fired union leaders; a commitment to bring laid off workers back to work in a timely fashion and not to discriminate in any future layoffs based on union membership; and a commitment to accept the results of the democratic union election, respect the union’s legal right to represent workers, and bargain in good faith, as required by national law. SCI also agreed to reinstate another illegally fired worker, employed at a sister factory, whose dismissal was linked to SCI’s broader campaign to prevent workers from exercising their associational rights.

The corrective actions by the factory’s parent company, Sports City International (SCI), represent a fundamental reform of the company’s labor relations policies and practices in the Philippines.

Read More:

• WRC Factory Assessment of Metro Wear 2 (The Philippines): Findings, Necessary Corrective Actions, and Company Response – October 3, 2025