The WRC and other labor rights advocates (including trade unions representing affected workers) have, in a growing number of cases, prevailed on brands to ensure that workers are made whole after their employer refused to pay severance. In some of these cases, the brands themselves have provided the necessary funds; in others, brands have responded to pressure by compelling the suppliers to make good on their arrears. In many, though not all, of the cases where remediation has been secured, one or both of these enabling conditions were present: (a) the closed factory was a subsidiary of a larger manufacturing company, which remained in operation and had valuable ongoing partnerships with apparel brands, or (b) one or more of the brands that were buyers from the factory were, themselves, contractually obligated to ensure payment of severance, as a condition of licenses from US universities to produce college logo apparel. In several high-profile cases of severance theft, a number of brands that were buyers from these factories contributed funds themselves to make workers whole. Under Armour were persuaded to require their supplier, Gimmill, to pay $2.6 million in severance owed to 4,000 former employees of the latter’s June Textile factory in Cambodia.44 In 2019, the WRC convinced Gap, Under Armour, and Fanatics to prevail on their supplier, Hojeon, to pay 2,000 employees of the latter’s PT Kahoindah factory in Indonesia, $4.5 million in severance.45 Brands Can Require Factories’ Parent Companies to Pay Severance Brands Themselves Can Remedy Severance Theft by Paying Workers An early instance of successful engagement by the WRC and other advocates to rectify nonpayment of severance was the case of the Estofel factory in Guatemala in 2009. After the factory’s closure, university licensee Gear for Sports (Hanesbrands), a former buyer, was prevailed on to require the factory’s former owner, Ghim Li, to pay more than $500,000 to nearly 900 workers.43 Importantly, in several high-profile cases of severance theft—at factories that were not part of a larger parent company that could be compelled to pay—a number of brands that were buyers from these factories contributed funds themselves to make workers whole. As noted, a key factor in a number of these cases has been that at least one of the buyer brands from the factory was a licensee of US universities and thereby obligated, as a binding term of these licenses, to ensure that all violations committed by its suppliers of licensed goods are corrected. Subsequent cases, where the WRC and other advocates have called on brands to require parent companies of closed factories to correct severance theft, have resulted in substantially greater sums paid to much larger numbers of workers. In 2011, Gap and WRC yz The first significant instance of a brand committing its own funds to correct large-scale Fired, Then Robbed zy Page 9