In April 2000, USAS founded the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC), an independent monitoring organization that investigates labor conditions in factories that produce collegiate apparel all over the world.

The WRC works with NGOs, human rights groups, and local labor unions or federations, in countries where collegiate apparel is produced.

USAS is also proposing that universities sign on to the Designated Suppliers Program (DSP), which would act to source collegiate apparel from factories that respect workers' rights to form unions and be paid living wages.

In 2000, Nike and other major clothing corporations renamed the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP) the Fair Labor Association (FLA), in large part to compete with the WRC.

The AIP, an initiative of the Clinton Administration, had become a discredited organization, because all non-profit organizations and unions that had initially supported it, withdrew from it, with the exception of the International Labor Rights Fund (ILRF), who subsequently withdrew their institutional membership on the FLA Board soon afterwards.