Universities: Support Bangladeshi Workers, Cut JanSport/VF

VF Corporation, the largest maker of branded apparel in the world, is the parent company of popular brands including the North Face, Vans, JanSport, Timberland, and 32 others. In Bangladesh, VF Corporation sources from 90 factories, employing over 190,000 garment workers, and VF refuses to listen to its Bangladeshi workers and sign a legally-binding agreement for fire and building safety in the factories.

Following the Rana Plaza factory disaster, and with immense public pressure, brands took action by signing onto a legally binding contract called the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh. Currently the Accord has over 190 brands signatories from 21 countries all around the world, including over 18 American brands.

Although 190 brands including Adidas, H&M, Calvin Klein, and Tommy Hilfiger have made a legally binding commitment to improve safety for the workers producing in Bangladesh, VF has refused to make the same legally-binding commitment and improvements for their workers. University and college students, as part of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), have spent the last 18 months running a national campaign to demand VF sign onto the Accord. Disappointingly, VF has instead partnered with Walmart to create an alternative, corporate-controlled program called the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety. Since its formation, the Alliance has been extensively criticized for its lack of real worker representation, binding commitments to implement changes called for by independent inspectors, and legal accountability.

JanSport/VF’s violations in Bangladesh are the most egregious cases in the maelstrom of other sweatshop abuses at its supplier factories, including stolen severance pay in Honduras, poverty wages in Cambodia that have led to massive worker strikes, and violence against union activists. In the last year, 17 universities have ended 21 contracts with JanSport/VF over the systemic presence of sweatshop conditions throughout the company’s supply chain, as well as VF’s refusal to address urgent threats to worker safety by signing the Bangladesh Safety Accord. All universities should follow suit!

VF’s Global Track Record

The abuses within VF’s supply chain, both in Bangladesh and globally, are innumerable. Below is a sampling of cases that demonstrate VF’s involvement in worker exploitation and injustice.

In December 2010, four Bangladeshi garment workers died and 100 were injured in clashes with police outside a factory owned by the Korean-based YoungOne group, a major producer of North Face and owner of the rights to North Face in Korea. At issue was failure of the YoungOne factory to implement a new minimum wage increase.

In 2010, VF was producing at That’s It Sportswear factory in Bangladesh (owned by Hameem Group), which burned, killing 29 workers and injuring more than a hundred. The factory had illegal construction, no proper fire exits, shoddy wiring, and locked exit doors. Workers were trapped on the top floors of the factory. Many jumped to their deaths. VF had repeatedly inspected the factory and yet had completely failed to address the safety hazards.

In October of 2012, another VF factory, Eurotex, which was disclosed as a producer of collegiate apparel, burned in Dhaka. This was a major fire, though it did not completely destroy the factory. No one was killed in the fire, because the factory was closed for a holiday – if the fire had occurred during the workday, many could have died. When contacted about this fire, VF claimed that their own disclosure data was wrong and they had stopped using the factory.

In August of 2013, the Worker Rights Consortium conducted a safety assessment of Optimum Fashion, a long-time VF contract factory producing collegiate apparel. After VF attempted to prevent the WRC from accessing the factory, the WRC’s inspection uncovered a number of very serious safety hazards, all of which constitute violations of university code of conduct provisions requiring licensees to maintain safe workplaces and any of which could result in injury or death to workers. These violations “included inadequate means for workers to escape the factory in the event of a fire and structural flaws that would facilitate the rapid and widespread propagation of deadly smoke throughout the factory building.”

In January of 2014, a 20 year old YoungOne worker was shot and killed by police during a strike over stolen wages despite promises by YoungOne group to change its practices after the aforementioned 2010 murders. YoungOne produces up to 40% of all of The North Face’s apparel.

On April 2, 2014, over 48,000 workers walked off the job at the Yue Yuen factory, a supplier for Timberland (a VF brand), in China’s largest strike in recent memory. The Yue Yuen workers had been robbed of years of legally owed social insurance payments and it was only after a massive strike in which several workers were beaten and kidnapped that the factory agreed to begin paying full social insurance and higher wages.

On June 20, 2014 in Bangladesh, the Medlar Apparels factory caught fire, a factory that has supplied VF apparel as far back as 2007. This fire occurred despite the fact that VF claimed to have “completed 100% of inspections at Bangladeshi factories where VF product is sourced.” The factory was initially successfully evacuated, but workers were instructed to reenter the burning building to fight the fire and presumably save equipment like sewing machines, thus resulting in several workers being injured. VF later applauded their own dangerous training program that teaches workers to fight factory fires.

In 2014, a potentially fatal inspection procedure was exposed at a VF factory in Bangladesh called Sinha Knitting. In July, the Accord audited Sinha and concluded that the factory’s concrete columns were severely over-stressed, enough so that the Accord recommended immediate closure due to the danger it posed to workers. However prior to this...