$10 million in unpaid wages and severance and, to date, have received next to nothing. A contribution by one buyer, Jack Wolfskin, owned at the time of the factory’s closure by Blackstone Group, was so small that the average worker received about $10—not even one percent of the money they are due.51 Meanwhile, these workers have yet to receive a single dollar from the factory’s largest buyer, Japan’s Fast Retailing (which owns Uniqlo), despite years of appeals.52 The more than 800 workers at the LD factory in El Salvador, who were owed $2.3 million when the factory closed in 2018, have since received $600,000 from Global Brands Group (Li & Fung), which was a buying agent from the factory for Levi Strauss, PVH, Ralph Lauren, and Walmart. The remaining $1.7 million they are due remains unpaid53 (as is often the case in such debacles within its sprawling supply chain, Walmart has been the most recalcitrant of LD’s buyers). Not surprisingly, in some cases, unions representing workers who have been waiting months or even years for severance may sign agreements accepting, in lieu of full payment of the amount legally owed, only a modest portion of the arrears. However, the legal right of workers to full payment of severance is, in most leading garment-exporting countries, a statutory entitlement, which is not subject to waiver.54 In addition to these workers, who, despite international efforts to secure remediation, have been permanently cheated of funds they legally earned, are the far greater number of workers whose losses to severance theft have never come to public attention: because they lacked collective representation and external advocates, because there was no independent organization in a position to conduct an investigation and document the violations, or because no major news outlet covered the story. Garment factory in Indonesia. Photo: masuro WRC yz Fired, Then Robbed zy Page 11