Correction Appended
The AU Campus Store will soon be stocking apparel from the first certified fair-wage college apparel company, Alta Gracia.
Alta Gracia is a clothing brand produced in a factory in the Dominican Republic and owned by parent company Knights Apparel.
The company pays workers a “living wage” and guarantees that they will have a safe, fair workplace, Joseph Bozich, the CEO of Knights Apparel said during a press call on Tuesday.
The minimum wage in the Dominican Republic is set at $140 a month, or 80 cents per hour, but Alta Gracia pays factory workers $510 a month, or $3 an hour, which it found was the minimum amount of money needed to support a family of four.
The apparel produced by this factory is sold in college stores across the country at the same price as other apparel brands like Nike and Champion, Bozich said.
Kristi Cole, manager of the AU bookstore, said Wednesday that shipments of all Knights Apparel products will be coming in later this month to the bookstore.
Bozich hopes the 125 factory employees at Alta Gracia can establish better lives for themselves through working for this company.
“This can truly be a pathway out of poverty for our workers and their families,” he said. “We’re using our business to make a life-changing difference. Doing good is good business.”
The company was founded in 2008 and takes its name from the village it is based in, Villa Altagracia.
Bozich said the idea for Alta Gracia came to Knights Apparel two years ago, and they set out to establish a factory in a developing country.
After originally planning for Haiti to be the factory’s location, the company settled on the Dominican Republic.
The Alta Gracia factory has passed inspection for fair labor practices on numerous occasions, according to Theresa Haas, the director of Communications for the Worker Rights Consortium, a labor rights group that monitors the working conditions in college apparel factories.
“No company has ever been as closely monitored as Alta Gracia,” Haas said.
The establishment of this company is a milestone in the workers’ rights movement, according to Haas.
“We consider Alta Gracia to be a crucial step forward in the effort to improve wages and working conditions for workers who make college apparel,” she said.
Demand for jobs at the Alta Gracia factory has been very high since it opened two years ago, according to Don Hodge, the President of Knights Apparel. The company has to make the criteria for each open position very specific.
They also have stopped hiring people recommended to the company — everyone must fill out an application and go through the interview process, Hodge said.
He said he feels it is his duty, as the owner of the largest supplier of college apparel in the United States, “to do more than we’re required for worker compensation.”
“We’re very excited and optimistic about [Alta Gracia], and we’re excited to see what it will become,” Hodge added.
jryan@theeagleonline.com
Correction: The headline of this article originally called Alta Garcia a fair-wage company. They are, in fact, a living-wage company. The Eagle regrets this error.
