Brilliant Alliance
Thailand
The Brilliant Alliance Thai Global factory closed in March 2021, leaving 1,388 unionized garment workers, who sewed lingerie for Victoria’s Secret, Torrid, and Lane Bryant, without their jobs. On March 10, workers arrived at the factory for their regular shift only to find the factory permanently closed, and their jobs non-existent. Many of these workers had sewn Victoria’s Secret products for 15 years – initially when the factory was named Body Fashion and then continuing after it was called Brilliant Alliance.
Orljava
Croatia
Orljava is a garment factory in eastern Croatia, which produced business shirts for the German high-quality shirt brand Olymp for over 50 years. When Covid-19 hit, Olymp began drastically cutting orders at the Orljava factory, forcing the factory to begin laying off some of its 300 workers. By April of 2021, Olymp - the factory’s largest buyer, representing 80% of production at the factory - stopped making orders altogether. Orljava went bankrupt and laid off the remaining 172 workers. The Orljava workers are still owed more than 500,000 euros in severance pay.
Ramatex (Violet Apparel)
Cambodia
In Cambodia, over 1,200 garment workers lost their jobs in July 2020 when the Ramatex-owned factory suddenly closed. In response, the workers demanded compensation, as well as their legally owed bonuses and unpaid wages. Nike and Matalan are among the companies linked to the factory. Nike claims to have ended the relationship with the factory in 2006, but photos and testimony of the workers show that the factory was producing Nike clothes as a subcontractor supplier for years.
Hong Seng Knitting
Thailand
Workers at the Hong Seng Knitting garment factory in Thailand who sew university logo apparel for Nike have been subjected to abuse, wage theft and retaliation by factory management from May - October 2020. After the pandemic caused a drop in orders, factory management compelled workers to sign a form falsely stating that they wanted to take voluntary unpaid leave. Nike claims that most workers volunteered to take unpaid leave, even though all of them could have chosen to be paid. The company has no explanation for why hundreds of workers would freely choose to give up wages to which they were legally entitled.
Hulu Garment
Cambodia
Hulu Garment, a sewing facility supplying Amazon, Adidas, Walmart, Macy’s, and LT Apparel Group located in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, suspended its entire workforce of 1,020 workers at the beginning of March 2020. A month later the factory reopened but at least 500 of the workers were never rehired. A year later, these workers continue to demand payment of the severance they would be legally owed if they had been fired, because they had been scammed and had not voluntarily resigned.