Fashion brand Hugo Boss, known for its Hugo and Boss lines of clothes, accessories, and perfumes, recently made the stunning decision not to re-sign the legally-binding, enforceable Pakistan Accord. 

Troublingly, Hugo Boss has dismissed concerns from unions and worker rights advocates, signalling that the company will instead rely on widely discredited social compliance audits and membership in the Fair Labor Association. 

This move is a significant downgrade of the company’s human rights commitment and has, rightfully, drawn criticism from around the globe.

What is the International Accord?

The International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry is a legally-binding enforceable agreement based on the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model. This model is widely recognized as the most effective tool for improving factory safety in a sector where preventable factory incidents have killed thousands of workers. It combines factory inspections, safety training, and worker-driven complaint mechanisms with publicly accessible remediation plans and binding commitments from brands. The program is currently active in two countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

The solution is ready; it is recognized for its effectiveness – now Hugo Boss just needs to re-sign the Pakistan Accord and ensure that its factories in that country are safe.

The Accord first launched in the immediate aftermath of the Rana Plaza collapse in Bangladesh in 2013. The factory collapse killed 1138 people and injured over 2500 more, sparking global outrage. This outrage forced brands to sign onto the initial Accord – and the rallying cry of “Rana Plaza, Never Again” has compelled over 280 brands to sign onto and renew their commitments. The Pakistan Accord took effect in January 2023, after nearly a decade of organizing by unions and advocacy groups pressing brands to agree to a binding factory safety program in Pakistan.

The Pakistan Accord renewed in January 2026 and 140 brands have committed to this binding agreement. Hugo Boss, however, declined to renew its commitment to workers’ human rights and safety. 

Hugo Boss Endangers Workers’ Lives

A key element of the success of the Accord and the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model is the combination of independent inspections paired with brands providing support for remediation. This is critical for improving the safety of factories, where needed improvements can be complex or costly. According to its publicly available supplier list, Hugo Boss reports working with eight factories in Pakistan. The Clean Clothes Campaign reports that many of these factories have undergone initial safety inspections by independent Pakistan Accord safety engineers, which uncovered hundreds of life-threatening safety hazards requiring urgent and time-bound action. Remediation is just at the beginning stage at many factories in Pakistan, as the Accord is in its first period of implementation.

Hugo Boss has a responsibility to see these issues through, not just cut and run when the issues are made public. 

Publicly available Corrective Action Plans show that outstanding safety concerns remain at factories supplying Hugo Boss. At the Kamal Mills factory, for example, the Corrective Action Plan lists nearly 70 issues, including unsafe electrical systems, storage blocking exit paths for workers, and lockable gates which could prevent workers escaping to safety in the event of a fire or other incident. 

“By failing to renew their commitment to the Pakistan Accord by the intended deadline, brands are knowingly refusing to participate in the necessary remediation to ensure safe working conditions for workers producing their clothes”, says Nasir Mansoor of the National Trade Union Federation, one of the workers’ unions that advocated for the Accord to expand to Pakistan.

Hugo Boss has a responsibility to see these issues through, not just cut and run when the issues are made public. 

Hugo Boss Hides Behind Discredited Commercial Social Audits

Instead of stepping up to its responsibilities, Hugo Boss has chosen to camouflage its lack of commitment behind an assortment of tactics which are both discredited and not actually designed to ensure safe factories. In a statement to FashionUnited, a trade publication, Hugo Boss stated:

“Hugo Boss is firmly committed to respecting human rights and ensuring safe working conditions across our entire value chain. Following a thorough internal review, we have decided not to continue our participation in the Pakistan Accord. Regardless of this decision, we will of course continue to consistently meet our due diligence obligations in Pakistan. To this end, we work closely with our partners and carry out targeted human rights assessments as well as social compliance audits. In addition, further monitoring is conducted through our accredited membership in the Fair Labor Association (FLA).”

In the first place, the Pakistan Accord is specifically designed to address health and safety, with exacting standards for ensuring safe factories. These standards cover everything from structurally sound buildings to ensuring safe evacuation pathways in the case of an emergency. These elements of the standards are assessed by highly trained, specialized fire, electrical, and structural engineers, not generalist social compliance auditors. 

It is preposterous that in the year 2026, a brand would assert that social audits could ensure safe factories.

Indeed, to propose that social compliance audits could fill the gap of the Accord is to have learned nothing from the tragedies of the last two decades. Sites of deadly factory fires and the Rana Plaza building itself were deemed safe by social auditors just weeks or months before they were reduced to ruins, killing hundreds or, in the case of Rana Plaza, thousands.¹ It is preposterous that in the year 2026, a brand would assert that social audits could ensure safe factories.

Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that social audits are not adequate to fulfill a company’s due diligence obligations. Even social audit firms are coming out and saying it. 

Fair Labor Association Is Not a Substitute for Worker-driven Enforcement

Lastly, Hugo Boss’ statement points to its “accredited membership” in the Fair Labor Association (FLA) as another way that they are ensuring that Pakistani workers are safe. This statement entirely misconstrues what FLA membership means. According to the FLA, “Fair Labor Accreditation signifies that an agriculture or manufacturing company has effective systems in place that protect workers in its global supply chain.” The emphasis of the accreditation process is on the brand’s own systems and standards, which are evaluated. 

The FLA also conducts annual assessments of 1% of the accredited company’s supplier factories. Hugo Boss has been FLA accredited since 2017; at the time of this writing nearly a decade later, there is just one assessment report of a factory in Pakistan, dated 2023. This report documents 14 violations which are grave enough to require immediate action, including lack of safety training for workers and no fire prevention systems or clear pathways or plans for evacuation. Yet the FLA does not require brands to contribute to the remediation of these violations, and the fulfillment of the corrective action plan is self-reported by the factory management. 

In multiple cases, the FLA has acted to delay or block remedy to workers.

The FLA’s failure to require full remedy has been repeatedly documented, including in PDR’s report, Checking Boxes, Cheating Workers: How Social Audit Firms are Complicit in Labor Rights Abuses. In multiple cases, the FLA has acted to delay or block remedy to workers. In the case study of Hong Seng Knitting, the report details how “an investigation by an inexperienced law professor following an unpublished methodology that uses widely discredited private auditing industry methods,” reached conclusions that were so implausible that the brand Nike ended up paying out a sum 23 times the FLA’s recommended remedy –after nearly five years of global campaigning and advocacy. Factory workers can’t wait that long for safe workplaces. 

Hugo Boss: Sign the Pakistan Accord

In its statement defending the decision not to re-sign the Pakistan Accord, Hugo Boss cites nothing but discredited mechanisms that are not fit for purpose: ensuring that workers are safe on the job. One “assessment” in nearly a decade is not enough to keep the tens of thousands of workers in Pakistan across eight factories safe.² Indeed, the FLA itself has recognized the Accord’s effectiveness in addressing and remediating safety hazards. 

And Hugo Boss knows it. The final part of its statement notes, “Our engagement in the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, as well as in the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety, has been ongoing since 2016 and will continue unchanged.” The solution is ready; it is recognized for its effectiveness – now Hugo Boss just needs to re-sign the Pakistan Accord and ensure that its factories in that country are also safe.

1. According to the report Figleaf for Fashion, published by the Clean Clothes Campaign in 2019, “These include the Ali Enterprises factory fire in Pakistan in September 2012, in which over 250 workers died, unable to escape due to bars on exits and windows; the Tazreen factory fire in Bangladesh in November 2012, where more than 112 workers lost their lives; and, exactly five months later in April 2013, the devastating collapse of the Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh, which killed 1,134 workers and left thousands more injured and traumatised. Each of these factories had been assessed and declared safe by several of the prevailing auditing companies, including TÜV Rheinland, Bureau Veritas, and RINA, using the standard, methodology and guidance of leading compliance initiatives such as Amfori BSCI and Social Accountability International (SAI). In the cases of both Ali Enterprises and Rana Plaza, accredited auditors had deemed these facilities safe just weeks or months before they were reduced to ruins. In terms of Ali Enterprises, this assessment was made by auditors who reportedly had never even visited the building.” ↩︎
2. Per Hugo Boss’ supplier list, the factories it sources from in Pakistan employ between 20,000 – 55,000 workers. ↩︎