Better Work: harnessing incentives and influencing policy to strengthen labour standards compliance in global production networks

This article explores what types of incentives drive buyers and suppliers in global production networks to raise the floor of labour standards and deliver better outcomes for workers. It does so by analysing the Better Work Programme, a policy intervention targeting the global apparel production network at the global, national and factory levels. Better Work is taken as an example of how global production networks and their dynamics, both trade-related and buyer-driven, can be harnessed to simultaneously achieve social and economic upgrading, presenting factory-level evidence from Cambodia, Haiti and Vietnam.