Issues

Labor Abuses in Factories

Workers in global supply chains systematically face exploitative working conditions, including sub-poverty wages and their frequent non-payment, gender-based violence and harassment, unsafe workplaces, excessive overtime hours, discrimination based on gender, race, and caste, digital surveillance, and brutal retaliation against efforts to collectively organize or protest against these conditions. Many of these abuses are not isolated incidents but are the predictable outcome of how the industry is structured around an imbalance of power between brands and suppliers. These abuses therefore persist despite brands’ public commitments to corporate social responsibility, as such commitments are typically voluntary, unenforceable, and undermined by brands’ own purchasing practices.

At the WRC, we independently and objectively document labor abuses at factories across the globe with a legal framework, in order to secure concrete remedies for workers.

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Occupational health and safety

Even with the existence of national and international laws that protect workers’ right to safe and healthy working environments, factory conditions remain unsafe across the garment industry.

Wage and Benefit Theft

Garment workers, already earning sub-poverty wages, are routinely denied the compensation they are legally entitled to.

Forced Labor

Widespread abuses in garment-producing countries occur on the same spectrum as forced labor violations.

Migrant worker exploitation

Globally, migrants make up a significant share of labor in garment supply chains – drawn by economic opportunity, but exposed to heightened risks of exploitation, discrimination, and abuse.

Repressing worker organizing

Growing authoritarianism and the closure of civic space are eroding workers’ fundamental freedoms across many garment-producing countries.

Occupational health and safety

Even with the existence of national and international laws that protect workers’ right to safe and healthy working environments, factory conditions remain unsafe across the garment industry.

Wage and Benefit Theft

Garment workers, already earning sub-poverty wages, are routinely denied the compensation they are legally entitled to.

Forced Labor

Widespread abuses in garment-producing countries occur on the same spectrum as forced labor violations.

Migrant worker exploitation

Globally, migrants make up a significant share of labor in garment supply chains – drawn by economic opportunity, but exposed to heightened risks of exploitation, discrimination, and abuse.

Repressing worker organizing

Growing authoritarianism and the closure of civic space are eroding workers’ fundamental freedoms across many garment-producing countries.

Labor Abuses in Factories

Explore more

Occupational health and safety

Wage and Benefit Theft

Forced Labor

Migrant worker exploitation

Repressing worker organizing

Occupational health and safety

Wage and Benefit Theft

Forced Labor

Migrant worker exploitation

Repressing worker organizing

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