When Marie was fired from a Haitian factory producing Old Navy clothing in July 2024, she was pregnant with her son, now 14 months old. Labor advocates describe the dismissal as a dual violation, breaching both Gap Inc.’s code of conduct barring pregnancy discrimination and Haitian law requiring ministry approval to dismiss expectant workers. All Marie knew was that it was illegal and unfair.
As it turned out, she was part of a wider purge. Three other pregnant employees, plus nine SOTA-BO union leaders—all women—were also let go that day. Marie, who started working at The Willbes in 2019, wasn’t entirely blindsided by the development: The factory was in the middle of shuttering two of its four production units, including hers, and laying off 900 workers. Nevertheless, her exit was dizzyingly swift: she and the other employees were summoned to HR, told to sign letters they barely scanned and handed a date to collect their severance.
She had assumed—incorrectly, it seemed—that her pregnancy would have protected her job from elimination. Instead, in signing those documents, Marie and her colleagues had inadvertently waived their right to transfer to still-operational parts of the factory. From her conversation with the manager, Marie believed she was merely acknowledging an involuntary termination—a procedural necessity to collect her severance—with no possibility of a future at The Willbes.
“I remember telling [the manager] that it’s not legal to fire pregnant women without authorization from MAST [Ministère des Affaires Sociales et du Travail], but he said the factory would close completely and that MAST couldn’t do anything about it,” said Marie, who asked to use a pseudonym in case of retaliation. “When I asked him if he had MAST authorization, he did not answer directly.”
The move, labor advocates say, casts a harsh spotlight on the growing divide between lofty corporate pledges and grimmer factory‑floor realities. For years, Gap Inc., which also owns Athleta, Banana Republic and the eponymous Gap, has positioned itself as a champion of women through programs meant to promote gender equity in global supply chains. But when platitudes aren’t backed by action, the disparity between branding and behavior becomes impossible to ignore.
Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, a Washington-based labor watchdog, said the fired workers didn’t know what they were signing, resulting in a lack of transparency that he suggests was by design. By framing the departures as “resignations,” he added, the pregnant employees forfeited the maternity benefits to which they were legally entitled, including the equivalent of 12 weeks of paid leave. This stripped them of a critical financial safety net at the vulnerable time of childbirth in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.
“In addition to being ethically reprehensible, this behavior is illegal,” Nova said. “The workers are entitled to reinstatement and back pay. The factory has similarly mistreated a number of union leaders; they are also entitled to reinstatement and back pay.”
When WRC contacted Gap Inc., one of The Willbes’ anchor buyers, the brand sided with the factory, which asserted that it had offered the workers continued employment, but they had “chosen” dismissal instead. Nova described the claim as not only improbable but false, as determined through interviews. Better Work Haiti, a factory auditing program backed by the International Labour Organization, also concurs with The Willbes’ version of events, though it has declined—or ”refused,” in Nova’s words—to make its auditor available for a WRC interview.
“Gap’s actions in this case violate its own labor standard,” Nova said. “In addition to Gap’s position being terrible, the company looks terrible, but it has dug in its heels and continues to side with a lawless supplier against the workers the supplier has abused.”
The impasse exposes another persistent tension in the garment industry: institutional trust in third-party audits that have been criticized for lacking accuracy or depth, versus the lived experiences of workers that those systems are meant to safeguard.
While The Willbes didn’t respond to a request for comment, a Gap Inc. spokesperson said the company—as a “responsible job creator in Haiti”—adheres to the standards and findings of the country’s Ministry of Labor and Better Work Haiti, which, together, “ensure worker rights are protected and international standards are met.”
In a statement, Better Work Haiti confirmed it monitored the closure of the facility in coordination with MAST. The organization said it reviewed the calculation of final payments for roughly 644 employees—including notice periods, unpaid wages and bonuses—and concluded that “workers and administrative staff received their legal entitlements.” Writing in its latest “Haiti synthesis” report, Better Work Haiti said records showed that 24 union members were offered reassignments within the company, but that nine chose not to accept.
“Guided by their recommendations, we ensured that The Willbes met all legal obligations and fully upheld the rights and protections entitled to their workers in Haiti,” the Gap Inc. spokesperson said. The retailer is now evaluating Better Work’s report and “will take all appropriate steps recommended within it.”
Nova, however, questions Gap Inc. and Better Work Haiti’s claims. Gap Inc. may have conducted an investigation, he said, but it didn’t interview affected workers. He cast doubt on Better Work Haiti’s credibility, calling its record “one of ineffectuality.” Most of all, standing by The Willbes, Gap Inc. is validating the supplier’s narrative that the workers engaged in a “conspiracy to resign and then falsely claim they were fired.”
“Gap is apparently trying to hide behind the fact that neither the Haitian government nor Better Work Haiti stood up for the rights of these workers,” Nova said. “Better Work’s exoneration of The Willbes is based on fraudulent letters the factory duped workers into signing. This is not the first time Better Work has given a seal of approval to a closure process that violated workers’ rights. I would bet it won’t be the last.”
Inside the factory, conditions were more visceral. For Roseline, 36, a five-year Willbes veteran who joined SOTA-BO in 2020, the factory’s red flags were already apparent before the layoffs began. Factory management, she said, regulated bathroom use by requiring supervisor approval to access the facilities. Workers arriving late were frequently locked out, only to be suspended the following day for “unexcused absences” in what she described as a self-fulfilling disciplinary loop. There was also insufficient drinking water, which, when provided, was “warm and barely drinkable.”
“I joined SOTA-BO because I did not like the way the factory was treating the workers and me personally,” said Roseline, who also asked to use a pseudonym. “But things did not really change in the factory because the union was there. If anything, joining the union made you more of a target for discrimination. They would intentionally suspend the line that had union members whenever there was a shortage of work.”
Gap Inc., however, maintains that its oversight is robust, with a code of conduct that explicitly requires suppliers to respect the right of workers to freedom of association and collective bargaining, strictly prohibiting any “harassment, intimidation, or retaliation” against union members. Haitian law also forbids dismissing workers for union activities.
Even so, conditions at The Willbes, as described by workers, reveal a larger industry truth: Workplace rules, whether laid down by a brand’s paper promises or national law, are only as good as their enforcement. Where oversight is nominal, reliance on self-regulation can descend into what labor advocates describe as “compliance theater,” one that’s replete with blind spots.
“The factory treats people however it wants because they know they have the upper hand, since labor laws are not enforced by the Haitian government,” Roseline said. “The union could have been more effective in the factory, but MAST responds more quickly to factory demands than to union complaints. But as a union, despite these barriers, we had to try. Otherwise, we would simply accept failure, which can only result in worse outcomes in the factories in Haiti.”
Minding the intention gap
The allegations also sit at odds with Gap Inc.’s public-facing commitments to women’s empowerment. The retailer has long touted initiatives such as Personal Advancement & Career Enhancement, or P.A.C.E., to provide female workers with foundational life skills and on-the-job training. As a founding member of RISE, billed as a “global collaboration of workers, industry and policymakers accelerating equality and opportunity for low-income workers in garment, footwear and home textile supply chains,” it says it seeks to, among other things, “increase agency and advance workers’ rights,” guided by women’s needs.
In Gap Inc.’s 2024 impact report, the most recent available, CEO Richard Dickson wrote that since women comprise the majority of the retailer’s customers, leaders, employees and apparel supply chain, Gap Inc. understands the “value women bring to our business” and funds programs worldwide to “ensure they are empowered to reach their full potential both at work and at home.” The scale of that business is massive: In its full-year report for 2025, Gap Inc. posted net sales of $15.4 billion, a 2 percent year-over-year increase. More than half of that came from Old Navy.
The reach, Dickson said, is how the company has been able to make “industry-leading investments,” such as improving water access through the Women + Water Collaborative. Since 2007, Gap Inc.’s P.A.C.E. and RISE initiatives have “positively impacted” more than 1.6 million women and girls in 85 percent of its strategic factories, he added.
For the fired women from The Willbes, however, the promise of increased agency and financial resilience has proven elusive. Since Marie was fired, and her husband became the family’s sole breadwinner, life has been a bitter struggle. Besides their toddler, they are raising a 14-year-old whose school fees climb with every grade. Keeping the children fed and clothed on a limited income “makes things even harder,” she said.
Other losses defy measurement. “I also had my little sister living with me, and I used to take care of her,” Marie said. “But after I lost my job, I had to send her back to my parents in the south of Haiti because I could no longer support her.”
Marie is steadfast in her conviction that her firing was illegal. She’s since been offered her old job, but will only return to The Willbes if her back wages are restored. Otherwise, she said, nothing would prevent factory management from doing the same again.
“I would never have signed a document saying I did not want to be transferred to another building, because I wanted to continue working,” she said. “I don’t have anything else to say. I am just hoping that Gap and The Willbes will do the right thing for us workers.”
So far, only one of the 13 dismissed workers has returned to The Willbes. None, however, has received the back pay they believe they’re owed.
Sarah Newell, campaigns director at Partners for Dignity and Rights, a New York nonprofit, acknowledges Haiti’s complexities as a sourcing hub—shifting trade policies notwithstanding—but says it “defies logic” that “coincidentally, all of the union leadership and all of the pregnant women would be among those to be laid off.”
The stakes extend beyond one factory and one brand. Haiti’s garment sector, which is responsible for 90 percent of the country’s exports, is on shaky ground because the duty-free provisions of the U.S. government’s HOPE/HELP Acts were recently renewed only through 2026. With companies pulling out because of trade uncertainty, workers are nervous about organizing, knowing that any friction risks further factory closures that could trigger more layoffs.
“Haiti requires a heightened level of engagement and responsibility,” she said. “And the idea that Gap has been sourcing from Haiti for so many years, and would say, ‘Oh, we trust the factory when they say the workers resigned and we don’t need to talk to the workers to affirm that story,’ I have a sense of disbelief in hearing that.”
What she found most troubling, however, was the apparent vacuum of accountability from those with the leverage to change things. This past January, the organization and more than a dozen others wrote a letter to Dickson citing the retailer’s lack of appropriate action—as required by its code of conduct and the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights—to remedy these “clear violations of women’s rights and union rights.” Since then, all Newell has heard is silence.
“We wrote to Gap when we first found out about the case; they have not responded. I know a number of civil society organizations have also written, and they didn’t respond,” she said. “I thought the letter would be enough to get them to respond and engage, but they have not responded to that letter or engaged at all. We’ve spoken with WRC, which says Gap has not followed up with them. So Gap seems to be completely ignoring the case, as far as we can tell.”
Still, Newell wants to keep pressing the issue. She said she’s noticed an uptick in incidents where workers were forced or tricked into signing paperwork as a legal shield for discriminatory restructuring. At The Willbes, she added, worker testimony that they didn’t know what they were signing away couldn’t be any clearer. What pregnant worker, she asked, would voluntarily give up paid maternity leave in a country where half the population faces severe food insecurity?
“It felt like this was an important one to challenge Gap on, because it’s a concerning trend that we’re seeing,” Newell said. “Honestly, my fear is that this is our new trend toward corporate impunity under the Trump administration. It really seems like corporations are feeling empowered to ignore the workers in their supply chains.”
Meanwhile, the dismissed workers still await compensation that may never arrive. Roseline hasn’t spoken to Gap Inc. directly, but she knows what she’d say given the chance: Resolve this debacle or risk The Willbes continuing its trajectory of abusing and illegally firing workers—perhaps worse.
“In that case, Gap would be complicit,” she said, “because they did not take action when these situations were brought to their attention. Even though they did not directly participate in firing us, Gap holds leverage over The Willbes, which made the decision to discriminate against us as union members and lied about us in the process of firing us.”
Roseline, mother to a 15-year-old daughter and a 5-year-old son, faces a crossroads. In Haiti, she said, there are few alternatives to factory work. Following her termination, she started a small street enterprise, but it failed to take off. In a city increasingly marked by bloodshed, gang activity that the United Nations says has killed thousands of people kept forcing her to move until it was no longer tenable to stay in business.
“Until I was fired, I used to send money to my parents every month to take care of my children, but now I can’t do that,” she said. “I send them money whenever I can; sometimes it takes more than three months before I can send them anything. As a mother, it hurts because your children depend on you, yet you can’t take care of them properly.”
