Better Work, a joint collaboration between the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to improve garment worker conditions, plans to expand its operations in Bangladesh. The organization is establishing a satellite office in Chittagong by 2020 where a growing number of the country’s factories are located, and is exploring opportunities to begin discussions with the Export Processing Zones Authority in order to improve working conditions in the sector while maintaining the improvements already implemented. The announcement was made by Better Work Bangladesh (BWB) programme manager Anne-Laure Greard at the Sustainable Apparel Forum held in Dhaka earlier this month. “Experience from the Better Work programme across nine countries shows that sustainable changes and improved working conditions across the garment sector benefit workers and their families, eventually driving higher profitability for manufacturers over time,” Greard says. While much investment has been made into improvement initiatives in the sector which are “highly commendable,” Greard notes the country still has “some of the lowest wages among ready-made garment producer countries and freedom of association also faces challenges.” Additionally, the industry’s “race to the bottom” on price at the lower end of the market places downward pressure on the supply chain, posing “further hurdles to the implementation of sustainable compliance across the factory floor.” “We can proudly say that the longer a factory is engaged with BWB the more notable its increase in compliance is. We also know that factories that have completed most of the required fire, electrical and structural safety remediation work can then direct more resources to other aspects of sustainable compliance. These include the protection of workers’ rights, the promotion of social dialogue and gender equity and the improvement of occupational health and safety compliance, as well as enhanced productivity and efficiency.” BWB is now looking at establishing a platform that will allow factories to exchange best practices to improve transparency and social compliance across the supply chain. “It is only through true sustainability in the country’s garment sector and a compliant value chain that we can guarantee inclusion, further growth and the retention of the industry’s global heavyweight status in the decades to come. A sustainable garment industry will in turn help shape up a sustainable society to be passed on future generations.” The Better Work programme was given the go-ahead to begin in Bangladesh back in 2013, as part of a wider package of measures to help shore up the sector in the wake of the Tazreen Fashion factory fire and the Rana Plaza building collapse. However, it was not rolled out until 2015, as reported exclusively on just-style.
