In China, freedom of association is
restricted by law. At the same time,
the Chinese garment sector increasingly
faces challenges such as labour
shortages and turnover issues as well
as labour conflicts. Recent developments
in Chinese legislation reflect
a strong need for better employee
relations and provide great opportunities
for the development of democratically
elected worker committees.
That’s why, building on our experiences
in Bangladesh, we have now
launched a social dialogue project in
China as well. The aim is to promote
awareness of workers’ rights and
responsibilities, two-way communication
between management and
workers, peaceful conflict resolution
and collective consultation in Chinese
factories. The management, HR staff,
CSR staff, supervisors and worker
representatives will take part in a
series of training courses and assessments
that will give them the skills
and knowledge needed to have a constructive
dialogue about issues that
are important to the workers.
We started in autumn 2014 with two
strategic suppliers and aim to add
another 8 suppliers in spring 2015.
By then, this will affect about 8,200
workers. From here, we plan to scale
up the project rapidly to ultimately
include all of our strategic suppliers
by 2018.