The International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Vision Zero Fund and Nike Inc. have launched a joint initiative to reduce deaths and injuries among garment and footwear workers. The initiative aims to understand why garment and footwear workers are so vulnerable to injuries and fatalities resulting from commuting accidents and to develop a common, standardized approach to reducing these accidents. Garment and footwear sector workers are “disproportionately involved in road accidents in many countries,” ILO said in a statement, adding that this could be connected with their commuting long distances, using less safe forms of transport such as motorcycles, walking to work, and sharing roads with heavy commercial vehicles.
The project’s approach includes creating a Theory of Change on road safety for garment and footwear workers, which is supposed to highlight the underlying causes of road accidents involving those workers. The Theory of Change has been put together after consultations with several countries’ workers, employers, governments and ILO specialists. The partnership will also develop practical materials on commuting safety, piloted by ILO’s Vision Zero Fund and Nike in a country where contract manufacturing facilities produce Nike products. The Vision Zero Fund will collaborate with ILO’s Better Factories Cambodia and Nike to identify the causes that need to be addressed to reduce injuries and deaths from road accidents and to collectively develop a more effective and standardized approach to reduce commuting accidents in the garment supply chain.
The ILO’s Vision Zero Fund is based on a model of collective action that mobilizes a wide range of stakeholders, including global businesses, to develop and implement joint solutions to safety and health challenges in the global supply chains. It currently implements projects in eight countries on three continents. Nike’s collaboration with ILO is reflected in the company’s 2025 Health & Safety Target, which aims to build “world-class safe and healthy workplaces” for the people making its products.
