Goals and progress
Supply chain | Our program in action
ILO/IFC better work program
Location: Cambodia, Vietnam and Jordan
Summary: For more than a decade, we’ve played a role in a unique international collaboration to improve working conditions in garment factories. Today, Better Work is expanding throughout the world.
In the late ‘90s, Gap Inc. embraced the opportunity to become part of a groundbreaking effort to improve labor standards and transparency.
The effort, called Better Work, is a partnership between the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) that seeks to help governments, workers and companies achieve compliance with the ILO’s core labor standards and national labor law through market incentives. By promoting innovative and credible systems, Better Work has sustainable impact and directly benefits the lives of millions of workers.
This effort began in Cambodia, which at the time was forging a unique partnership with the ILO as a result of a landmark trade agreement with the U.S. We knew that to make sustainable improvements, we needed to join with others to pool resources, knowledge and skills. The ILO – with its unique expertise and credibility on labor rights — was working with government, industry, and labor groups to oversee a new approach to factory monitoring.
Given our size and presence in Cambodia, we felt we had a primary role to play as well. We helped with the program’s design and practical complexities. And we took a long-term view, seeing this collaboration as a potential model for change throughout the world.
Better Work tells the story of what it takes to create scalable impact. For instance, we saw an opportunity (in addition to monitoring), to move into training and capacity building – which helps factories develop their own systems to improve working conditions. Together with local NGOs, we developed a training program in Cambodia that later evolved into a bigger collaboration between Gap Inc. and the IFC. Capacity building was eventually incorporated into the Better Work model, and the IFC joined forces with the ILO to help expand Better Work beyond Cambodia.
We envisioned this expansion early on. In 2006, we invited representatives from the program, along with Cambodia’s Minister of Commerce, to a conference we helped organize in Central America on fair labor standards and global competitiveness. Today, Better Work is exploring expansion into the region.
"As one of Better Work’s original international buyer partners, Gap Inc. has enthusiastically contributed their technical expertise and long-range strategic thinking to the development and rollout of the program,” says Amy Luinstra, Officer in Charge of Better Work. “They have also used their role as an industry leader to bring other buyers on board and set an example for others."
Better Work now has financial backing from more than a dozen governments. In Cambodia, ILO/IFC Better Factories Cambodia conducts all of our company’s factory monitoring, freeing up our internal resources to focus on capacity building and remediating problems. By eliminating the need for individual brands to conduct separate auditing, Better Work increases efficiencies and establishes clearer standards.
The program launched in Vietnam in October of 2008, with Gap Inc. a key supporter, encouraging our Vietnamese suppliers to participate and coordinating efforts with the Better Work team. In the fall of 2009, Dan Henkle, Gap Inc.’s senior vice-president of Global Responsibility, joined leaders of four other major companies in supporting Better Work’s expansion into countries ranging from Haiti to Jordan to Indonesia.
