H&M: the Swedish company, together with the IF Metall union and the ILO, is launching a project to develop collective bargaining within its Cambodian subcontractors

The project is carried by H&M, the clothing brand, IF Metall, the Swedish union, the Swedish government via its development and cooperation agency, and the ILO.  After SKF and Atlas Corpo, H&M is the 3rd Swedish company the IF Metall has convinced to invest into collective bargaining.  But here, the brand’s subcontractors are involved in the project and the goal is to change behaviors in some plants to improve compliance with standards throughout the sector.
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“We approached H&M to propose the same kind of project we had already done with two other firms in Sweden – SKF and Atlas Corpo – in China and in India on joint training for management and local unions, a little like the Swedish model. The company thought about it for a long time before accepting,” Erik Andersson, secretary in charge of international issues at the IF Metall Swedish union federation told Planet Labor. Over time, the talks to materialize the project brought other...

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