Can Better Factories and Better Business Exist Together?
Criticizing global supply chains is necessary, but it raises another question: can they actually improve? Better Work, a joint ILO–IFC program, offers evidence that change is possible, but also shows how difficult it is.
The garment sector employed about 65 million people across Asia and the Pacific in 2023, with women making up 55% of the workforce. Better Work evaluates factories in countries including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Viet Nam, tracking labor standards while helping workers and managers address problems together.
Some results are encouraging. In Bangladesh, the share of factories failing to conduct proper occupational safety and health assessments fell from 78% to 29% across five assessment cycles. Yet major problems remain. In all four countries studied, well over half of factories continued to violate national overtime limits, showing how production pressure can undermine even improving compliance systems.
This is what makes the issue more complicated than labeling individual factories “good” or “bad.” A factory can improve safety procedures while still facing last-minute orders, tight deadlines, and commercial pressures from buyers.
To me, the strongest lesson is that worker protection cannot depend only on factory inspections. Brands, suppliers, governments, and workers all shape the conditions inside a factory. Improving labor rights therefore requires changing not just workplaces, but the relationships that govern the entire supply chain.
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