Migrant Workers

Why

Some of Patagonia’s suppliers in Taiwan, Japan, Thailand and South Korea hire foreign migrant workers to take jobs in their factories. This is a common legal practice in relatively small countries where there aren’t enough domestic workers to fill manufacturing jobs.

But more often than not, employers are using third-party labor brokers who charge foreign migrant workers thousands of dollars simply to get hired. These workers are desperately seeking jobs and are lured by the prospect of earning a wage several times what they are able to make in their home country, and labor brokers take advantage of this situation. After the workers pay the fee, they become vulnerable to bonded labor and forced labor while in a new country. Employers favor this system because the recruiting is done by a third party with the cost typically paid by the worker.

At Patagonia, we see this problem mainly in our contracted fabric mills in Taiwan. In almost all cases, our suppliers are hiring a sizable portion of their workforce from Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines and/or Indonesia with the help of third-party labor brokers. We know these workers are being charged up to $7,000 for their jobs, depending on their home country and on the labor broker.

Patagonia is committed to eradicating all forms of human trafficking and forced labor in our company’s supply chain. As soon as we discovered these deep-rooted issues in 2012, we began working with our suppliers to eliminate those fees. In a broader context, we are collaborating with other apparel brands and industry organizations to improve migrant-worker conditions. We know these issues are widespread and require systemic changes that no one company can bring about alone.

Where We Are

In 2011, Patagonia began tracing its materials supply chain while also expanding its Fair Labor Association® (FLA) social responsibility program to include Tier 2 fabric mills (raw-materials fabric and trim suppliers). This was one of the first times a buyer—in this case Patagonia—had introduced a workplace code of conduct and social compliance monitoring to their Tier 2 suppliers. Buyers don’t typically trace their supply chain beyond Tier 1 suppliers (finished goods) and instead expect their Tier 1 factories to find Tier 2 fabric suppliers that can meet their specifications. But because our products are rooted in technical performance, we develop relationships with Tier 2 suppliers to make sure their materials meet Patagonia standards—then we nominate them to Tier 1 suppliers.

When we set out to formally map, track and record our Tier 2 supply chain in 2011, we began with foundational concepts, like educating suppliers on our Code of Conduct standards, transparency expectations and audit requirements. The next step was global audits of Tier 2 fabric mills in 2012. That’s when we discovered that our Taiwanese suppliers were employing foreign migrant workers who had to pay labor brokers high fees. We also found issues with passport retention, deposits, curfews and inaccurate contracts, among other concerns.

We immediately investigated the breadth of issues, the different recruitment systems, and the relevant legislation and parties involved, and quickly learned that this is a systemic problem, not only within our supply chain but in Taiwan at large. Labor shortages, a lack of knowledge of issues facing migrant workers and labor laws that do not sufficiently protect migrant workers have all contributed to a problem that isn’t just common but legal, too.

Our vision has always been not only to help workers in our supply chain, but to help other migrant workers in Taiwan who face the same situation and encourage other brands to join us. So rather than ignoring the problems or exiting the country, we began our now more than decade long commitment to addressing these issues with our suppliers, the Taiwanese government and the apparel industry as a whole. For many years, we remained the sole apparel buyer working on these issues in Taiwan. Patagonia is, on average, 1–5% of a single supplier’s total production, so we turned to other fashion and outdoor apparel brands sourcing in Taiwan to help us build leverage. At that time, no other companies were ready to join us.

So we took a different approach. We reached out to The Atlantic with a firsthand account of the labor issues we uncovered in Taiwan, giving them access to audit findings and internal discussions with leadership to raise broader awareness. The article got the attention of other apparel brands who wondered if their supply chains were similarly impacted, but we still didn’t get the industry support needed.

We continued the work on our own, and in 2017, set out a company strategy to eliminate fees by 2020 that could also be adopted by other brands as a blueprint. We called it “No Fees by 2020,” and created tools and materials that any brand could use in their own supply chain (e.g., implementation roadmap, recruitment calculator, various audit and Corrective Action Plan templates and communication material to suppliers). We sought support from the industry, and five brands joined our initiative.

Through this collaboration, we built consensus on policy and expectations for remediation and sent a unified message to our suppliers of the critical need for responsible recruitment. This collective action was pivotal in achieving widespread elimination of fees by 2020 in our supply chain and other significant improvements to workplace conditions, like policies to ensure workers have full control of their wages.

Since 2013, we have had two employees who oversee all the work we do to limit these practices across our workforce–one based in Ventura, California and one in Taiwan. Led by these two focused specialists, our migrant worker program has three core commitments.

1. Migrant Worker Employment Standards & Implementation Guidance

First published in 2014, our comprehensive set of standards outlines our expectations of ethical recruitment and employment practices. We spent a year developing this resource with subject matter experts like Verité—a supply chain NGO advising us on everything from understanding the hiring process and local employment laws to training our suppliers and auditing them—as well as the FLA. The Standards apply to our global supply chain, not just fabric mills in Taiwan, and supplement our Workplace Code of Conduct and Benchmark Standards. It has since been adopted in part or in full by other brands.

In October 2020, we revised and supplemented this document after review and analysis by in-house and third-party experts, like Verité. This update aligns with standards established by the UN’s International Labour Organization, the FLA and the US government. While much of this work is focused on Taiwan, our migrant-worker standards and program apply to our global supply chain. (You can find Version 2.0 at this link.)

Patagonia supports our suppliers in making and sustaining positive changes in the workplace. We also stress that our suppliers must invest and take ownership of the changes so that responsible practices endure regardless of whether or not Patagonia is a customer. We continue to work with our suppliers to ensure these standards are fully implemented.

2. Key partnerships at local, industry and legislative levels

In addition to collaboration with other outdoor brands, we have engaged with a wide range of NGOs in Taiwan, Thailand and the US to help us understand the migrant worker experience and recruitment landscape and to gather worker feedback. We also rely on these partnerships to inform the development of our global migrant worker program and the tools needed to implement it locally.

We have also had a long history of engaging with Taiwan’s government, the Taiwan Textile Federation and other stakeholders to vocalize the importance of responsible recruitment—even when we were the only apparel brand working on these issues. For example, we’ve linked arms with the Taiwan Ministry of Labor and its Direct Hiring Service Center, which offers employers the ability to hire foreign migrant workers directly, eliminating the need for labor brokers. Together we communicate about any worker issues that arise and look for viable solutions in partnership with our suppliers.

3. Regular surveys, studies and audits to gauge impact

We have been able to verify the impacts of these changes not only through our audits year over year, but also through direct feedback from migrant workers collected outside of audits. In 2022 we commissioned a study to gather worker feedback and other impact metrics of our key programs. In Taiwan, we heard from over 800 migrant workers about their hiring and employment experiences.

• Over 95% of migrant workers reported that they did not owe money for their jobs and 77% reported that they did not pay to get their jobs—findings that are consistent with recent third-party audits at facilities that had implemented the “No Fees by 2020” policy.

• Investigation reports conducted by the nonprofit Transparentem and shared with Patagonia reflect similar results from worker interviews at those facilities.
• On average annually, we help recoup about $1.7 million dollars from recruitment fees, monthly broker fees and other employment expenses for more than 3,000 workers in Taiwan.

For a more detailed look at Patagonia’s migrant-worker program history, view our timeline.

What’s Next

Our work over the last decade-plus has resulted in meaningful impact for migrant workers in our supply chain, yet we know more needs to be done to scale and sustain the change. The most effective tool to make that happen is with legislation that protects migrant workers and upholds responsible recruitment practices. That is why we are working closely with multi-stakeholder groups, the apparel and textile industry, and the Taiwanese government to explore and develop policies to address migrant worker vulnerabilities, like prohibiting fees for workers and eliminating penalties for unfinished contracts. We are committed to this advocacy for the long term.

Using worker feedback and audit data, we will also continue to address the most pressing needs for workers in our supply chain. We know that effective brand collaborations can make change happen faster at the facility level and we are actively seeking like-minded brands to partner with so we can leverage greater, more widespread change together.