A new study has found that a United Nations-backed programme aiming to promote competitiveness and improve the working conditions of more than one million workers in garment factories across seven developing countries has shown significant gains in both quality of life for workers and profitability for businesses.

The programme — called Better Work — was established in 2007 by the UN’s International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corporation. Currently engaging 1,300 factories that employ more than 1.6 million workers, the programme operates in seven countries: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti, Indonesia, Jordan, Nicaragua and Viet Nam.

According an independent review by Tufts University, the Better Work programme moves factories away from practices leading to long working hours, extremely low pay, dismissal threats, or abuse of probationary contracts. Workers are also seeing an increase in their weekly take-home pay and are less and less concerned with excessive overtime and poor wages.

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Photo: UN