Decent Work in Garment Sector Supply Chains in Asia: Industrial Relations Scoping

Background

In early 2017, the ILO reached agreement with the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) to carry out a scoping exercise in the garment industry in Asia. The deliverables of the scoping phase will align with Sweden’s Regional Strategy for development cooperation in Asia and will take into account the ILO’s roadmap on decent work in global supply chains. Assessments will be undertaken to document the context, potential partners, challenges and opportunities for a regional programme focusing on industrial relations and decent work in the garment sector. The findings validated by a multi-stakeholder group. Finally, this will feed into the development of project proposal document to be submitted by the ILO to the Swedish government for consideration for a regional Decent Work in garment sector project in Asia.

The scoping phase is planned to occur in a number of steps, building on the existing knowledge-base of the ILO (i.e., research, studies, and impact evaluations) on decent work deficits in global supply chains on the level of factory, industry and sector; governance deficits, particularly as regards labour inspection, labour laws, institutions, climate change adaptation and mitigation and other factors affecting social dialogue/industrial relations, including capacity deficits, gender inequalities, laws, regulations and practices. These will be leveraged in the interest of establishing a regional programme.

Objectives

The objectives of the assignment are to:

• Map and identify the main issues, opportunities, ongoing activities, good practices and programmes and key stakeholders common across the region for effective social dialogue/industrial relations/decent work in supply chains in the garment industry in Asia;
• Provide an over-all and gender-responsive situational analysis of social dialogue/industrial relations/decent work related shortcomings/challenges in the sector and the region;
• Assess the capacity/potential role to be played by institutions on the (sub) regional and global level to support national-level capacity to address the issues identified in the situational analysis;
• Suggest criteria, and based on those criteria recommend which countries and partners could be included in the regional programme as well as the most effective mechanism for the ILO to leverage partnerships (public, private and non-profit) for the regional programme;
• In two selected countries , and with support from locally recruited expert consultants, provide a more in-depth assessment of industrial relations (legal and regulatory framework, institutions, processes, actors, outcomes) using an adapted, accelerated version of the Diagnostic Process on Freedom of Association and Collective Bargaining in the Export Processing Sector, IRData, IRLex and Better Work database (if available for country concerned); and
• Propose components for a Decent Work in garment sector project in Asia.