Better Work Global Programme Phase III – (2015 -2017) Geneva

The global garment industry offers developing countries the opportunity to support inclusive develop-ment through job-rich growth and promotion of women’s empowerment and participation in the labour market. The industry offers formalized employment to over 60 million workers worldwide, the majority of whom are female. However the industry is renowned for poor job quality. The garment sector has poor safety and health standards and is characterized by low wages, long working hours, frequent reports of verbal abuse sexual harassment, and gender discrimination. Labour inspectorates typically lack the capacity to enforce the law and collective bargaining agreements in the sector are still a rarity. Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives have had some impact in improving working conditions but progress is uneven, interventions are often fragmented and are widely regarded as unsustainable. Better Work has years of experience working at all levels of the supply chain to find sustainable solutions in eight countries. Our impact results have proven that our programme can improve working conditions, improve the competitiveness of participating manufactures and present opportunities to build the capacity of government and social partners to play their role in labour market governance. Better Work Global (BWG) will continue to provide technical support to country programmes by devel-oping globally consistent tools required for implementation of services, providing leadership develop-ment, ensuring quality control, and coordinating global communications and relationships with donors, constituents and over 60 global buyers. BWG will also conduct global monitoring and evaluation, impact assessment and research programmes each of which feed into upstream policy debates within ILO, IFC and other international organisations. The programme has divided up its activities into four over-arching objectives for this next portion of phase III. The activities and outputs are intrinsically inter-linked, particularly as the nexus between its core service impact, related to issues of sustainability and policy change becomes clearer. BWG plans to achieve these aims by focusing on four major areas during this period, which include: • Better Work will achieve scale, quality and effectiveness in its service delivery. • Better Work and its alliance will catalyse changes in relevant strategies, policies and practices at sectoral, national and international levels. • Better Work will strengthen its engagement with buyers to improve their supply chain practices and support the BW programme. • Better Work Global with support from its governance structure will enable progress towards sustainable and viable country programmes. The following Project Document explains the challenges in the garment industry, and how Better Work Global contributes to solving these problems, in more detail.

Project symbol

GLO/15/67/MUL

Admin unit

BETTERWORK

Start date

01/07/2015

End date

30/06/2017

Total allocation

5977976

Total expenditure

Status

Closed

5968223

Development Partners

Netherlands, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Denmark, Danish International Development Agency
Switzerland, State Secretariat for Economic Affairs

Country/Countries

Global

Outcomes

Promoting workplace compliance through labour inspection