Background

Improving labour standards in the global supply chains is an important part of a pro-poor development strategy. Ensuring that workers’ rights and entitlements are protected would help distribute the benefits of trade. In order to take advantage of these opportunities, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) collaborate in developing the Better Work programme for better labour standards in global supply chains and extending the coverage to Indonesia.

Better Work Indonesia (BWI) aims to help enterprises in Indonesia improve labour standards compliance from one hand and increase competitiveness and productivity on the other. The focus of the project will be on long-term sustainable solutions that build cooperation between Government, employers’ and workers’ organizations, and international buyers. Phase I of the BWI programme began in July 2010 with initial funding for two years in the Greater Jakarta area, covering three provinces (Jakarta, West Java and Banten provinces) and may extend to other areas/provinces and sectors. BWI has been operational in Indonesia since July 2010, with over 140 factories registered and over 15 partner brands participated in the programme. 

Based on the BWI baseline report: worker perspectives on factory and beyond (2012), one of the key issues in the garment industry is the workers concerns over health issues. Workers reported many concerns with health issues at workplace, including severe fatigue, dizziness, head, back or neck ache. While factories are encouraged to take measures to address the above, workers would need to increase their knowledge and awareness on health issues at workplace and make the factory management to give more attention on this matter. With majority of workers in garment workers are women, it is natural to target women workers on campaign toward women workers’ health at workplace.

To promote the health issues, BWI has conducted various campaigning activities including but not limited to trainings, seminars, production and printing of campaign materials, discussions with management during advisory visits and many more. However, this time BWI applies new approach by organizing a workers fun day to reach wider participants and promote the issue in a way that is more engaging to the targeted workers.

For this purpose, BWI will work in collaboration with Yayasan Kusuma Bangsa (YKB), an organization with a long standing and experience in promoting health issues at workplace. Earlier YKB supported by the HOPE Project had worked with a number of garment factories to promote workers health, and has been succesfully trained factory teams to ensure the sustainability of the program. For this event, YKB will play key roles in coordinating and managing the technical aspects of the event and coordination with the local government offices to ensure their support to this event.

Objectives

The overall objective of the activity is to increase awareness on women workers’ health issues among workers in the apparel sector in Indonesia which resulted in changes in mindset and behaviour toward health issues. The specific objectives of the activity are the following:

• To promote issues on women workers’ health targeting garment sector workers in Subang Regency, West Java province in an interactive approach.
• To foster wider engagement with garment workers on BWI priority issues
• To strengthen relationship and collaboration among BWI’s stakeholders (government departments, factories and workers).