Monday – Garment workers from twenty unions in six countries across Asia joined forces to demand an end to stock buybacks by U.S.-based Big Fashion companies and the transformation of global supply chains including living wages for garment workers.

Hear more from the Asian union leaders at the forefront of this campaign here. 

Global Labor Justice-International Labor Rights Forum (GLJ-ILRF), in partnership with Asia Floor Wage Alliance (AFWA) and 20 of its member unions, launched the Fight the Heist campaign. The launch included filing an international labor rights complaint with the OECD and releasing a new report, Big Fashion and Wall Street Cash in on Wage Theft that reveals how Nike, Levi’s, VF Corporation and their wealthiest investors are profiting through wage theft from garment supply chain workers.  

At an inspiring inaugural launch meeting, worker leader Dilhani, a member of the Textile, Garment and Clothing Workers Union (TGCWU) in Sri Lanka, shared how she faced wage theft by a Nike supplier during the pandemic after working for the company for six years. After she spoke up about the injustice, management locked her in a room for hours and forced her to resign. (See her speak here).

Like Dilhani, the majority of garment workers are women, and face the compounding factors of wage theft and the responsibility to support families that rely on their income. Worker leaders from across Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Indonesia  shared the scale of the devastating impact on the lives of their members across the region. As the report shows, garment supply chain workers who are already working significant overtime to maintain their basic family economies lost on average 22% of their wages in 2020, and have still received no payback. 

To the contrary, after quickly bouncing back from a brief pandemic slowdown in 2020, executives and investors at Nike, Levi’s, and VF Corp. took home massive profits through stock buybacks. 

That’s why workers, their unions, and global allies are calling on these Big Fashion companies to: 

• Sit down with garment workers and their unions for a systematic investigation of COVID wage claims, including the specific impacts on women workers. 
• Stop billionaire payouts from dividends and stock buybacks until all garment workers are repaid their lost wages.
• Transform their garment global supply chains including providing living wages for all workers.

U.S. unions have long been calling on Wall Street to invest in workers instead of in stock buybacks. With the launch of Fight the Heist, garment supply chain workers from across Asia joined this movement and linked arms across borders. U.S. labor leaders representing the campaigns of railroad workers, airline workers, coal miners and more pledged mutual solidarity and welcomed Asian garment supply chain workers to a shared struggle against Wall Street and for decent working conditions. 

Join us to Fight the Heist and help us amplify our launch message with our Social Media Toolkit!

Together we can end the corporate greed of Big Fashion’s billion-dollar stock buybacks and support Asian garment workers as they demand transformation of global supply chains and living wages.