Apparel brands owe $22 billion to supplier factories

According to Workers Rights Consortium findings cited by Vox, major apparel brands owe their supplier factories $22 billion. The impact of this shortfall has trickled down to some of the world’s most vulnerable workers, employed by such factories throughout the developing world, who lost jobs overnight, often with no severance.

The underlying problem goes back to the early days of the pandemic, when a shuttered retail sector caused major apparel makers to retrench, canceling or delaying orders as supply chains practically froze in place. And to be sure, the garment industry — which employs an estimated 40 million workers worldwide, Vox notes — is a while from full recovery.

But some brands have bounced back. And an activist outcry led companies such as H&M and Inditex (owner of Zara) to pay for completed orders. Still, the Workers Rights Consortium calls out brands from American Eagle to Kohl’s to Oscar de la Renta as having announced no plans to make good on orders canceled in production.