Better Work Viet Nam - Phase II (Dutch Contribution 2014-17)

The Better Work Vietnam programme (“BWV” or “the programme”), a partnership between the Interna-tional Labour Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC), aims to reduce poverty by expanding decent work opportunities through improving labour standards and competitiveness of apparel factories. The program became operational in July 2009. Since that time, BWV has been able to help secure a continued global market for apparel produced in Vietnam and improve working conditions for factory workers engaged in the sector. It does this by combining assessments of factories’ compliance with labour standard with targeted advisory and training services. This helps factories to differentiate themselves in the international market by increasing their overall competitiveness and meeting buyer demands for socially responsible sourcing. Three years on, BWV continues its operations being aware of both sustained demand for its products and services, and challenges to the sustainability of both the programme and its results. By engaging with participating factories in this important sector of economic activity, BWV has been able to affect and document improvements in compliance with national labour law and international labour principles. BWV wants to see a spill over effect of changed patterns in managing human resources currently found in BWV’s participating factories to enterprises outside of the program. While it has been shown that labour standards in BWV’s participating factories do not regress where improvements are made, stagnation and segmentation between “good” and “bad” factories threatens continued improvement of working conditions in the sector. BWV wants to find the “tipping point” at which its core services and other activities can help transform a low labour standards production culture into one of compliance. In its next phase, BWV will therefore reach for impact beyond individual factories. To achieve this, BWV will strengthen the way it conveys to and instils in factory management an appreciation of the business benefits being shown to flow from BWV interventions and labour standards’ compliance. This is necessary to assure that the demand for BWV services from producing factories overtakes and eventually replaces that of buyers as the dominant incentive for compliance-minded factory management and participation in the programme. In sum, BWV musters globalizations’ market forces for the improvement of labour standards, working conditions, incomes and job opportunities for the ultimate benefit of workers and their families.

Project symbol

VIE/14/01/NET

Admin unit

BETTERWORK

Start date

01/01/2014

End date

31/12/2017

Total allocation

3402926

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

3402926

Development Partners

Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Country/Countries

Viet Nam

Outcomes

More and better jobs for inclusive growth and improved youth employment prospects