JanSport brand has the privilege of providing some of the licensed collegiate apparel for the University of Wisconsin. We’re proud that we screen and embroider it at our facility in Appleton, Wisconsin, which employs nearly 800 hardworking men and women.
Recently, a group of well-intentioned people have written their own narrative about the university’s relationship with the JanSport® brand and its parent company, VF Corporation. The topic: apparel 
production in Bangladesh.
This portrayal, however, is unfortunately based on misleading statements and omitted facts. The fact is, the JanSport® brand does not produce any apparel or accessories in Bangladesh.
Because the JanSport® brand’s parent company, which owns more than 30 other brands, does produce some apparel in Bangladesh, a small group believes that the university should take punitive action against the JanSport® brand, even at the risk of losing Wisconsin jobs just 100 miles from the UW campus.
Our critics’ chief concern is the safety of garment workers in Bangladesh. We share that concern.
Today, VF does business with contracted producers of apparel and accessories in Bangladesh. We do not employ 190,000 people there, as others imply. And, we have not produced any collegiate apparel, for any of our brands, in Bangladesh since 2013.
A conspicuous omission in some others’ narrative about the situation is VF’s membership in the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a legally binding group of 26 companies including Fruit of the Loom, Gap, J.C. Penney, Kohl’s Department Stores, L.L. Bean, Macy’s, Sears, Target and Wal-Mart. This working group has contributed to meaningful progress in its efforts to make Bangladeshi factories safer during the past two years since it was formed.
The strategy underlying the alliance includes: standards and inspections, remediation, worker empowerment, training and sustainability. The goal of the alliance is focused on systemic and sustainable improvements in fire, structural and electrical safety within Bangladesh’s garment factories, seeking to ensure that garment workers are provided with a safe working environment. The alliance is committed to working with a broad group of stakeholders to make progress on our shared objective: the safety of factory workers in the ready-made garment sector. We are working with worker organizations, factory owners, NGOs, civil society and the government of Bangladesh to ensure that safety improvements are sustainable.
In addition to its alliance-related activities, VF has invested financial resources to make contract factories in Bangladesh safer, including a program to provide $10 million in low-interest loans to help supplier factories pay for safety improvements.
And, importantly, when there were threats toward a local Bangladeshi labor union in 2014, restricting freedom of association and engaging in violence, VF led a first-of-its-kind effort in Bangladesh in coordination with others to solve the problem in a way that kept the workers employed, safe and free to be members of a meaningful union. This story was covered in detail by The New York Times.
Progress has been made in Bangladesh; however, there is still much more to do. It is difficult work. Different organizations with common goals must continue to work together. VF will stay the course as one company, as a member of the alliance and in collaboration with other like-minded organizations — all of which are sharply focused on the same goal: worker safety in Bangladesh.
–CRAIG HODGES | VF Corp.
