GiveBetter x Los Angeles

Garment Worker Center

Worker organizing, wage enforcement, industry policy and member support

Research time: 18 min on GPT-6 Astra Light
  • Research — reviewed programs, finances and impact evidence.

Updated: 2026-09-14

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Summary

What do they do? Garment Worker Center organizes low-wage LA garment workers and helps enforce wage rights. Its latest return reports actual wages and penalties collected, which anchor a conditional income-related health component at full recipient cost. The estimate does not capture the complete value of worker organizing, safety policy or the new Justice Campus.

Why we’re interested in this organization:

  • Reported collections are more informative than claims filed or people contacted.

  • Current organizing and clinic work target a concentrated local industry.

  • Original returns expose both rental costs and a major capital transition.

Our main reservations:

  • The health effect of recovered income is a subjective assumption, not a measured QALY yield.

  • Public enforcement and already enacted law may substitute for privately funded activity.

  • The 2024 audit was unfinished at filing, and capital needs make historical operations an imperfect marginal guide.

What do you get for your dollar? $88.1M per better life: ten additional quality-adjusted life years in Los Angeles. Wage-recovery partial-health only; full recipient cost.

Central Rnet=$219,500; 36.5833 equivalents of $6,000 in incremental resources. Each receives a 0.01-QALY finite one-year prior before residence and delivery discount. These are modeled resource equivalents, not observed additional workers.

1. What do they do?

This report covers Garment Worker Center, EIN 81-0622327. Its clinic provides consultations, self-help and representation for wage theft and retaliation. Worker organizing, youth leadership, member support and industry development are substantive parts of the recipient, not overhead to be discarded.

The current industry campaign seeks implementation and resources for LA garment-sector development. Its recent report describes continued noncompliance and economic vulnerability. The report's 18,408 apparel-manufacturing employees and the homepage's broader 45,000-worker figure have different coverage and are not treated as current beneficiaries caused by a gift.

2. Monitoring and information sharing

The 2024 return narrative reports 194 workers assisted with wage claims and approximately $878,000 of wages and penalties collected. It separately reports 135 workers/youth in training, 6,250 outreach contacts and 191 support cases. These categories may overlap; no contact or workshop automatically earns health credit.

Collections are a realized financial outcome, but still do not reveal which dollars would have arrived without GWC, whether recipients lost benefits or earnings, or how a new gift changes capacity. Future measurement should follow net household resources, timing, retaliation, worker residence and non-overlapping injury outcomes. Policy wins should be assessed against already funded implementation.

3. Qualitative assessment

SB62 has applied since 2022. Its historic passage belongs in today's baseline, not the benefit of a new donation. Enforcement and trusted representation can still change whether rights become real payments. The central scenario credits only a fraction of reported collections, then assumes a finite, modest one-year health effect from reduced material hardship.

That last step is uncertain. A large US randomized cash study found early stress and food-security improvements but no persistent mental-health or physical-health effect. It does not establish a QALY conversion for wage restitution. The chosen 0.01 QALY per $6,000 net-resource equivalent is a subjective planning prior, including the possibility of zero; it is not derived from an income–mortality correlation.

Randomized California inspections reduced injuries, supporting a possible safety pathway. Worker organizing or wage litigation is not the same intervention, and GWC-induced inspections and injuries are unobserved. That branch remains a transparent skeleton rather than a fabricated central benefit. Employment displacement, retaliation and harms to workers outside LA could offset gains. The priced component is not a complete portfolio ranking.

4. What do you get for your dollar?

The 2024 original return reports $2,820,655 in Part IX plus $153,503 rental expenses netted from revenue: gross recipient cost is $2,974,158. The other event, gaming and inventory lines show zero. 2023 and 2022 gross expenses are $2,295,897 and $1,216,663, with no such addback shown. The comparable accrual-return mean is $2,162,239.33.

This is recognized annual resource expense, not a full economic valuation of volunteer work or the entire acquisition price. The latest return states that its audit was unfinished and an amended filing was intended; none was identified in the reviewed index. Blank donated-service reconciliation does not prove no unrecorded services. The state-funded property acquired in 2024 should not be charged wholly against one year's operating effects or silently treated as free capital forever.

The conditional wage component yields 0.337 LA QALY at full gross cost, about $88.14 million per 10. Positive stress cases range from $2.91 million to $52.34 billion, not confidence limits. Achieving $1 million per 10 across the whole portfolio requires 29.74158 net LA QALYs annually; $100,000 requires 297.4158. Public enforcement costs and employer compliance resources are additional social costs, while recovered wages are transfers, not a deduction from recipient expense.

Model, assumptions and sensitivity

Full recipient gross annual cost; priced health limited to a wage-recovery component.

g=.95 is a judgment about LA/Orange resident share of represented workers; employment in LA is not proof of residence.

Rnet=R*a*b; E=Rnet/k; Q=E*q*g/1.03; Price10=10*C/Q. R=878000,a=.5,b=.5,k=6000,q=.01,g=.95,C=2974158. Qportfolio=Q+Qother-H, with Qother unknown. Safety skeleton Qs=Nnew*injuryRate*.094*transfer*healthPerInjury*duration*g; Nnew and local injury bridge unknown.

C
2974158 USD gross annual recipient cost (observed). Part IX plus $153503 rental expense. [99024]
R
878000 USD collected wages and penalties (observed). Approximate organization-reported amount, not independently audited causal effect. [o24]
a
0.5 counterfactual collection attribution (judgment). Half would not otherwise be collected or are accelerated equivalently; test .1–.9. [o24] [law]
b
0.5 proportional funding response (judgment). Contracts, capital allocation and other donors can replace resources; test .1–.8. [o23] [campus]
k
6000 USD net-resource equivalent (judgment). Normalization for a finite health prior, not observed income threshold; test 3000–12000.
q
0.01 QALY per resource equivalent over one year (judgment). Modest hardship-related health prior, not a cash-trial estimate; test 0–.05. [cash]
g
0.95 LA/Orange residence fraction (judgment). Local clinic supports concentration; test .8–1. [clinic]
d
0.03 one-year delivery discount (judgment). No repeated lifetime benefit.
Qother
null non-overlapping portfolio QALYs (unknown). Safety, organizing, services and campus effects need separate causal measurement. [industry] [safety] [campus]

Conditional wage-recovery health component: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: 0.33741909385113267; all-population QALYs: 0.3551779935275081. a=0.5;b=0.5;k=6000;q=0.01;g=0.95;d=.03. Subjective joint scenario, not a statistical bound.

Weak income-health translation: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: 0.000568284789644013; all-population QALYs: 0.0007103559870550163. a=0.1;b=0.1;k=12000;q=0.001;g=0.8;d=.03. Subjective joint scenario, not a statistical bound.

Favorable income-health translation: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: 10.229126213592235; all-population QALYs: 10.229126213592235. a=0.9;b=0.8;k=3000;q=0.05;g=1;d=.03. Subjective joint scenario, not a statistical bound.

No incremental health: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: 0; all-population QALYs: 0. q=0 or complete funding replacement.

Illustrative net worker harm: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: -1; all-population QALYs: -1. One LA QALY lost through retaliation or displacement; not an observed estimate.

Whole-portfolio return unestimated: Cost: $3.0M; Los Angeles QALYs: unknown; all-population QALYs: unknown. Do not use omitted benefits as zero in a complete-portfolio ranking.

Counterfactual: Existing law, DIR representation, other advocates and employer payments continue. a discounts collections that would occur anyway; b concerns future resource responsiveness, not another collection probability.

Attribution: R is collected wages and penalties, not filed claims. k defines resource-equivalent units, not an observed household size or number of people. No lifetime income or mortality extrapolation and no duplicate counting of ongoing wages.

Health conversion is explicitly subjective and contested by modern randomized income evidence. Conditional component best estimate only; zero, harm and omitted policy value remain possible.

Sensitivity

  • Central $88144330.13 per 10 LA QALYs; positive stress range $2907538.67–$52335696013.67.
  • Income-only Q=0 is consistent with plausible causal interpretations; monetary recovery remains valuable even without QALY gain.
  • Doubling cost for unrecognized capital/user resources doubles the positive price; capital benefits require matching multi-year attribution.
  • Safety-policy model needs incremental exposed worker-years, baseline injuries, local enforcement transfer and finite injury severity; no full-sector credit.

Unresolved inputs

  • Current marginal operating versus capital allocation.
  • Net counterfactual collections and household consequences.
  • Measured utility effects of wage restitution and worker residence.
  • Additional safety enforcement and injuries, retaliation and displaced employment.
  • Completed audit, amendments and unrecognized resource values.

5. Funding and previous grants

The latest return records $9,257,935 in government grants and $10,060,845 total revenue. Net assets were $7,653,173, but cash was only $204,063 and net land/buildings/equipment were $10,468,795; net assets are not an unrestricted cash runway. The return does not separate donor restrictions using the usual FASB categories.

The Justice Campus page confirms a state-funded 2024 property purchase and describes renovations in stages. These are plans, not completed additional clinic capacity. Schedule O also says the emergency hardship fund closed after reduced donations and grants. The 2023 narrative identifies the DIR wage-claim pilot partnership. These details show both public support and real allocation tradeoffs.

The central 50% funding response is a judgment that a proportional resource increment produces half the corresponding collection capacity after replacement and delays. New unrestricted gifts could instead fund capital, worker leadership or support services, so this operating scenario is conditional. No restricted best-program donation, outreach or payment is assumed.

Annual expenses

Organization-level spending, including programs, administration and fundraising. The research list averages three comparable, consecutive full fiscal years when available.

  • FY 2022: $1.2M; Garment Worker Center, EIN 81-0622327, 12-month period, Calendar-year gross accrual Form 990 expense, restoring separately netted rental costs where present; not an audited valuation of unrecognized services.. Source
  • FY 2023: $2.3M; Garment Worker Center, EIN 81-0622327, 12-month period, Calendar-year gross accrual Form 990 expense, restoring separately netted rental costs where present; not an audited valuation of unrecognized services.. Source
  • FY 2024: $3.0M; Garment Worker Center, EIN 81-0622327, 12-month period, Calendar-year gross accrual Form 990 expense, restoring separately netted rental costs where present; not an audited valuation of unrecognized services.. Source

6. Sources

  1. 2024 original Form 990; submitted November 11, 2025. GWC / IRS. Published: 2025-11-11; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  2. 2023 original Form 990. GWC / IRS. Published: 2024-11-13; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  3. 2022 original Form 990. GWC / IRS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  4. 2024 accomplishments and unfinished audit disclosure. GWC / IRS. Published: 2025-11-11; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  5. 2023 public partnership and program history. GWC / IRS. Published: 2024-11-13; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  6. 2024 Schedule D. GWC / IRS. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  7. Current wage clinic. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  8. Justice Campus: state-funded acquisition and planned renovations. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  9. Current industry program. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  10. Building a Sustainable and Equitable Garment Industry in California. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  11. Current worker resources. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  12. Existing SB62 baseline. California DIR. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  13. Randomized income and health evidence. Miller and colleagues / OpenResearch. Published: 2024-07-21; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  14. Randomized safety inspection evidence. Levine and colleagues / Science. Published: 2012-05-18; retrieved: 2026-09-14.
  15. Ordinary recipient donation page. GWC. Published: not stated; retrieved: 2026-09-14.