The WRC has confirmed severance theft during the last 12 months at 31 garment factories in nine countries. In the aggregate, these factories deprived 37,637 workers of an estimated $39.8 million in legally due compensation. There are also several cases where worker organizations have signed agreements accepting less than workers’ legal due, because they feared that if they held out for full payment, workers would get nothing. As previously noted, this is a common occurrence in the history of severance theft, and it is important to understand that an agreement purporting to absolve an employer of its obligation to meet minimum legal standards is invalid on its face. Such agreements have no more legal legitimacy than an agreement calling for workers to be paid less than the legal minimum wage or granting an employer permission to violate fire safety regulations. The Process for Identifying Brands and Retailers The WRC identified the brands and retailers that produce, or produced, clothing at these factories using several methods. In many cases, the information comes from the buyer itself: either the factory appears on the brand’s or retailer’s own public list of suppliers, posted on its corporate website, or in a public database (e.g., Open Apparel Registry55) that compiles supplier lists provided by brands to third party organizations. In other cases, the WRC confirmed the buyer-supplier relationship via official US government customs records that document shipments WRC yz from the factory to the buyer, accessed by the WRC through the proprietary ImportGenius database.56 In some cases, the information comes from workers themselves, who provided the WRC with credible testimony that they manufactured the brand’s products. Such testimony was accompanied occasionally by photographs of these products or of brand labels, taken by workers inside the factory, or by factory records documenting the presence of the brand. In certain instances, a factory lists the brand or retailer as a client on its website; when this is the original data source, the WRC requires an additional form of confirmation, since factories may list a brand erroneously or continue to list it as a client after the relationship has ended. With respect to many of the buyer-supplier relationships we have enumerated, the brand or retailer has acknowledged the relationship through correspondence with the WRC (or through correspondence with a third party reviewed by the WRC). In any case where the brand or retailer denies the relationship, the WRC has not reported the relationship unless we consider the available proof to be definitive. Where explanation is required as to the basis for the WRC’s determinations, it appears in an endnote. Because of the obvious interest brands and retailers have in distancing themselves from suppliers implicated in wage theft, it is com- Fired, Then Robbed zy Page 14