(a) Brands must publicly commit to pay suppliers for orders placed before the pandemic, including those that were cancelled or paused as a result of coronavirus, in full and without asking for discounts.

(b) To be removed from the PayUp Fashion Brand Tracker, brands and retailers must #PayUp in a timely manner without extending payment terms unless low-cost financing can be offered.

(c) Those emerging from bankruptcy agree to pay for orders placed prior to bankruptcy. Companies that buy bankrupt retailers are required to #PayUp for any outstanding orders.

(a) Support a Severance Guarantee Fund. While strengthening national social safety schemes is necessary, brands must fill in the gaps in benefits for garment workers in the meantime. We demand that brands pay #TenCentsMore per garment to the Severance Guarantee Fund. In alignment with the Clean Clothes Campaign network, PayUp Fashion calls on brands to protect laid-off garment workers by paying into a binding social safety net fund that kicks in when workers experience severance theft. #10centsmore 

(b) Get Direct Relief to Workers. Brands should also provide and push for direct financial relief to garment workers for income lost during the pandemic. This can be done either through brands’ own channels and foundations, through International Financial Institutions, or through international relief efforts such as the ILO Call to Action and the USAID Memorandum of Understanding. Brands must contribute or work through relief efforts and foundations to release an amount equivalent to 1% of their 2020 net revenue. Meeting this part of the demand is not a replacement for contributing to the Severance Guarantee Fund.

(c) Protect Democracy, Human Rights, and Freedom of Association. The fashion industry must uphold fundamental human and worker rights. Brands’ purchasing practices are often instrumental in either upholding or suppressing basic rights.

In Myanmar, brands must urge their suppliers to support workers’ rights to protest and participate in the civil disobedience movement against the military coup. Brands must halt orders from factories that support the military regime.

In China, brands must stop all sourcing of cotton from the Uyghur region and endorse the End Uyghur Forced Labour Call to Action.

Any brand found limiting the freedom of association or failing to support collective bargaining rights or other human rights of garment workers in their factories will automatically be ineligible for movement on Action 2 of the PayUp Fashion Brand Tracker.

(d) Protect and Expand the Bangladesh Accord on Fire & Safety. We are calling on all brands that are signatories to the original Accord to sign on to a new agreement that extends and expands the benefits of a binding agreement on workplace and building safety. 

(a) Factory list: Brands must disclose a list of cut and sew factories in the manufacturing phase of their supply chain, in alignment with the Transparency Pledge. Ultimately, brands should disclose additional levels of subcontractors, including textile mills and the farms where their cotton, wool, leather and other natural materials come from.

(b) Wages to factory workers: Disclose the wages of the lowest-earning workers at each factory, in accordance with the Fashion Checker’s demands to brands.

(c) Findings from factory social audits and corrective actions: Share audit and remediation reports publicly and make findings available to garment workers in audited factories.

(a) Brands must demonstrate an increase in number of garment makers covered by collective bargaining agreements and union representation on a year-over-year basis.

(b) Worker representation must extend to the governance structures of brand-funded multi-stakeholder initiatives like Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), Better Cotton Initiative (BCI), Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC), the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), Better Work buyers forums, amfori, SEDEX, Fair Labor Association, FairWear Foundation, as well as major conferences and events that shape the ethical and sustainable fashion agenda and are funded by brands, including the Copenhagen Fashion Summit.

(a) Commit to binding worker-driven agreements. Binding agreements in the private sector that oversee workplace safety and wage increases are a proven way to protect workers. Brands will commit to negotiations to enter into these agreements whenever they are advanced by workers and unions. Examples of these agreements include the Bangladesh Accord on Fire & Building Safety.

(b) Adopt the Buyer Code of Conduct. Brands will commit to and insert the American Bar Association working group’s Buyer Code into purchase order contracts, thereby commiting themselves to responsible brand purchasing practices that uphold the human rights of their supply chain workers. For the past 30 years, supplier codes of conduct, which are non-binding, developed by brands, and lack an effective role for worker representation, have pushed all responsibility onto factories and are ineffective at protecting garment makers. The Buyer Code is a crucial tool to correct this imbalance of power and obligates Brands to commit to the following:

– Responsible exits and force majeure events: Brands often cut and run from suppliers, without any obligation to the impacted garment workers. During Covid-19, brands cancelled orders without payment on shipped and finished goods, leading to catstrophic layoffs without pay. Often one-sided contracts imposed on factories protect these actions. The Buyer Code instead commits brands to mitigate the human rights impacts of decisions to leave or break contracts, to provide reasonable advance notice to Suppliers, and to pay its suppliers for any outstanding invoices and/or for costs already incurred, whether the brand is exiting the factory for human rights or commercial reasons.

– Fair prices and pro-worker payment terms: The fashion industry currently favors brands and retailers and operates on risk and debt that is borne by factories and in turn by garment makers. It is standard industry practice to not pay factories for 60, 90 or 120 days after order shipment, with factories bearing the up-front raw material and labor costs. Prices that brands pay to suppliers and real wages to garment workers have gone down in many countries in recent years, including Bangladesh, despite costs going up. The Buyer Code by contrast commits brands to negotiate to agree to a fair price for goods that covers all of the costs of production, including costs associated with upholding responsible business conduct. Any decisions on payment terms will be negotiated with the Supplier and agreed to only after ensuring that the payment terms would not trigger violations of the Buyer’s own human rights commitments.

– Humane production planning and delivery schedules: Often Buyers’ request unrealistic delivery times or last-minute changes to orders make it extremely hard for the Supplier to manufacture and deliver the goods without requiring workers to put in excessive overtime or subcontracting the work to another site. Under the Buyer Code (section 4), the Buyer commits to collaborating with Suppliers on an order timeline that allows both parties to uphold human rights and does not trigger excessive working hours or unauthorized and unregulated sub-contracting, which protects garment makers. 

Resilience built into the fashion sourcing system will prevent workers from falling through the cracks in the first place. The future of fashion must include living wages: wages that are high enough for garment workers to meet basic needs for themselves and their families and establish savings. The #PayUp movement stands in solidarity with other labor rights groups who’ve been advocating and working towards a living wage for garment workers for years.

We need bold new policies and regulations that incentivize brands for supporting human and labor rights and holds corporations accountable for the harms they cause to supply chain workers. Brands and retailers will support rather than thwart and lobby against legal reforms to both corporate structures and supply chain due diligence. Laws in buying and supplying countries must establish the legal liability of companies for human rights violations in their supply chains and ensure that supply chain workers have access to effective remedy. These reforms include:

(a) Legal reforms that strengthen corporate accountability for garment makers in buying countries that hold brands and retailers responsible for human rights violations and wage theft in their supply chains. Examples include mandatory human rights due diligence introduced in the EU and California’s Garment Worker Protection Act proposed in 2021.

(b) Establish a regulatory body to regulate brand or “buyer” purchasing practices in supply chains. Ensure that the largest garment retailers’ are no longer able to apply abusive purchasing practices on their suppliers, but instead must respect principles of fair dealing in their relationships with suppliers, treat their suppliers lawfully, and cease to impose unilateral changes to contracts on suppliers.

(c) Reforming bankruptcy protocols to protect garment workers when suppliers are forced out of business.

(d) Reforming government bailouts to include garment and supply chain worker protections. The current system where brands shore up their own balance sheets and rely on public monies for bailouts without consideration for human rights must be corrected.

Examples include: California’s Garment Worker Protection Act, the French Duty of Vigilance Law, Germany’s proposed bill for supply chain due diligence, Indonesia’s Unemployment Scheme, Vietnam’s ratification of Collective Bargaining and proposed EU Mandatory Human Rights Due Diligence legislation.