Blog: Wage Theft

Fight the Heist: Asian Unions Join Forces with GLJ-ILRF & Asia Floor Wage Alliance in Campaign to Stop Nike, Levi’s & VF Corp. from Funneling Stolen Pandemic Wages toward Buybacks

Garment supply chain workers, a majority of them women, faced massive wage theft and income loss during the COVID-19 pandemic when Big Fashion brands’ like Nike canceled or drastically reduced orders en masse (as detailed in Asia Floor Wage Alliance’s (AFWA) Money Heist report).

Meanwhile, Wall Street investors and owners made record profits and paid themselves millions of dollars through stock buybacks.

Modern-Day Servitude in U.S. Port Trucking: A Call to Retail Brands

Today, southern California’s port truck drivers and warehouse workers - many of whom are Black and Latinx workers and TPS recipients – begin a three-day strike to send a clear message to their port trucking employers (XPO Logistics and NFI Industries) and the country’s most powerful brands and retailers: put an end to rampant wage theft and the misclassification of port truckers.

How Anti-Sweatshop Activists and Unions Made Severance Pay Mandatory

In August last year Iris Montoya came to work at the Rio Garment factory in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where she had worked as a sewing machine operator for 11 years. At 11 a.m., the factory lights shut off and management escorted the workers outside, locking the doors behind them.

Management announced that the factory was shutting down operations that very day. Panic broke out. Workers were told to go home, barred from retrieving their belongings, and left without their last week’s pay.

Three weeks later, when Montoya went to the hospital for foot surgery, she was denied coverage. Management had been deducting insurance from workers’ paychecks for the past five months but had not been depositing the money into the health care system.

Modern Day Slavery in Mexican Tomato Fields

If you haven’t seen or heard about it yet, stop what you’re doing and read the LA Times’ powerful series of articles on modern day slavery and other human rights abuses taking place in some of the giant Mexican tomato fields that supply Walmart, Safeway, Subway, Olive Garden, and other popular U.S. retailers and restaurants. 

The LA Times’ reporters visited 30 different mega-farms in nine different Mexican states, observing conditions first-hand and interviewing hundreds of workers and their family members. 

We’ve listed the main findings, taken directly from the report, below:

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