From hoodies and T-shirts to baseball caps, apparel with university and collegiate names and logos is a booming business in Canada and the United States.
Colleges and universities earn revenue each year by licensing their trademarks to major apparel companies, including Lululemon and Fanatics. These companies, in turn, rely on vast supplier networks located primarily in countries with weak labour protections and regulations.
The result is a disconnect between the values many universities espouse and the practices they enable. Canadian universities have a critical role to play in the advancement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including Goal 8, which promotes sustainable economic growth and decent work for all.
Yet workers who make university-branded apparel often receive low wages, face gender-based violence and harassment, experience retaliation for union involvement and work in unsafe buildings.
As an expert in labour exploitation and modern slavery in supply chains, I believe universities and colleges have a responsibility to ensure these workers have decent working conditions.
Rise of student activism and monitoring
Concerns about labour conditions are not new. Since the late 1990s, student activism has led many universities to adopt codes of conduct for licenses for upholding workers’ labour rights. However, finding out if these rights were actually being upheld was challenging.
Universities turned to certification programs and social auditing firms to monitor compliance, but research shows these programs are often lax and fail to disclose violations. These monitors are too close to the companies they work for, leading to conflicts of interest and limited transparency.
Because of this, the student anti-sweatshop movement pressed for independent monitoring. In 2000, United Students Against Sweatshops established the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent organization that was initially set up to help colleges and universities enforce their manufacturing codes of conduct. It also performs independent investigations for other organizations and companies when asked to do so.
Unlike most corporate social auditors, the WRC is the only independent organization serving the university community that isn’t affiliated with the apparel industry.
It investigates factories based on worker testimonies. These investigations can be triggered by reports from universities, workers or local non-governmental organizations. Investigations are designed to ensure transparency through public reporting, and the WRC works with apparel brands and factories to secure remediation.
According to the WRC, it has helped more than 700,000 workers through factory investigations and helped them win more than US$150 million of legally owed back pay. It has also helped reverse terminations for 1,810 workers who were wrongfully fired for exercising their right to associate.
Lessons from Rana Plaza
The importance of independent monitoring of corporate labour rights codes was highlighted by the collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh in April 2013, which killed 1,131 workers. Factories in the building produced garments for several major brands, including the Loblaw’s Joe Fresh line.
Despite some of the brands having codes of conduct and audits, none identified or corrected safety violations in the months before the collapse.
In the aftermath, the WRC helped implement and enforce the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, a five-year independent, legally binding agreement between global brands, retailers and trade unions to build a safe Bangladeshi garment industry. Reports of the accord show significant improvements in fire and building safety.
Expanding the fight for workers’ rights
Beyond Bangladesh, the WRC has devised ways for brands to use their economic leverage to persuade suppliers to address systemic problems like gender-based violence and harassment in the garment sector.
Its investigations led to two agreements to eliminate these issues: one in Lesotho in 2018 and one in Central Java in 2024. The WRC’s university-affiliate program was crucial in Central Java, since the supplier produced university-logo goods.
This work shows that reducing and addressing labour abuse in global garment chains is possible. The WRC’s success stems from its institutional features that enhance its legitimacy: independence from unions and corporations, its investigative nature and its focus on workers.
Why university participation matters
University affiliation is crucial for the WRC’s success. While many universities have signed on, the number of affiliates has declined from 186 in 2010 to 154 in 2025.
To become an affiliate, a university must adopt a manufacturing code of conduct, incorporate it into contracts with apparel companies, share a list of factories involved in producing their merchandise and pay an annual affiliation fee.
Only six Canadian universities are affiliates: McGill University, Queen’s University, Thompson Rivers University, the University of Guelph, the University of Winnipeg and the University of Toronto. McMaster University, where I taught in the School of Labour Studies until this year, recently withdrew after 23 years.
For Canadian universities that market themselves as global citizens and champions of the sustainable development goals, affiliation should be seen as a moral obligations. By choosing to become an affiliate, universities demonstrate their commitment to protecting the rights of workers producing the apparel and goods that carry their names.
Judy Fudge receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
