The health and economic impacts affecting all workers is falling disproportionately on women. In particular, key issues include pressure on healthcare systems and redistribution of government spending away from services that support women; the impact of school closures limiting ability to continue to work – if available – or look for other work; pressure to find other sources of income (which may be unsafe); travel restrictions preventing women returning home to care for their families and/or being vulnerable in their temporary living quarters and; an increase in violence against women. Better Work is working with partner organisations (Empower@Work and CARE International) to identify how industry stakeholders can support women with both information and interventions to mitigate these impacts. More information is available at: https://www.empoweratwork.org/
Better Work is seeing serious disruption at all levels of the supply chain. We have adapted our factory services and are acting quickly to leverage our reach and technical expertise to address the immediate and urgent needs of workers, managers, national governments, and buyers. While every national context is different, programmes are focused on the following:
Where Better Work cannot visit factories, we are providing advice and joining worker management meetings virtually. We are also reviewing the documentation provided. We will verify these issues in person as soon as we are able to visit factories again. We are also working with national authorities to gain clarity on relevant national laws so that we can share those with all industry stakeholders.
Better Work is working with other departments in the International Labour Organisation to produce a checklist for labour administrations on how to reopen factories in way that protects the health and safety of all workers and management.
Country specific updates can be found at the bottom of the Better Work COVID 19 response page.
The current focus where factories remain open is on maintaining services virtually and through creating industry wide responses to the pandemic in each country.
For those factories who experience temporary closure (either due to national restrictions, health reasons or reduced/cancelled orders), we are working on scenarios which may include extension of cycle length and/or reduced fees depending on how the situation develops over the coming weeks/months.
Better Work’s focus is on supporting the industry, and while some in-person factory visits are still not possible, our country teams are busier than ever supporting factories and constituents (virtually if not in-person) in response to the crisis.
We have implemented adjustments to our advisory and training services and where possible introduced alternatives to assessments and reporting e.g. Virtual Compliance Checks with accompanying reports on the portal. Buyers can unlock factory report cycles to view available information, any additional reports or updates due to service rescheduling will be uploaded into those same report cycles as soon as available. Credit expiry date remains 31st December of the year of purchase.
Buyers are urged to show flexibility and ensure factories are not punished for not meeting audit or reporting schedules. There are other ways to get updates on factory progress that can be accessed via the Better Work portal including: virtual compliance check reports, live Improvement Plans including factory updates on publicly reported issues, training plans and Progress Reports. Better Work staff will do all they can to verify information provided by factories by reviewing documents and interviewing joint worker management committee members.