According to a report released on Sunday, workers in three of the largest garment manufacturing centers in the world—Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Vietnam—are being subjected to more and more intense heat as temperatures rise due to climate change. This is an issue that global retailers and brands will need to assist in resolving.
Retailers like Inditex, H&M, and Nike are under pressure to help finance upgrades to cool factories they procure from because of new EU legislation that makes them legally responsible for the conditions at their suppliers.
Researchers at Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute discovered that the number of days with “wet-bulb” temperatures—a metric that takes into consideration both air temperature and humidity—above 30.5 degrees Celsius increased by 42% between 2020 and 2024 compared to 2005 to 2009 in Karachi, Dhaka, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phnom Penh.
In order to maintain safe core body temperature levels above that threshold, the International Labor Organization advises getting as much sleep as work in any given hour.
Only three retailers were found in the survey to have supplier codes of conduct that expressly address measures to prevent heat exhaustion among employees: Nike, Levi’s, and VF Corp.
Businesses issued warnings
CEO Jason Judd of Cornell University’s Global Labor Institute told Reuters, “We’ve been talking to brands about this issue for ages now, and they’re only now starting to turn their attention to it.”
“Under this new set of rules, a brand or retailer is required to take action if they know that temperatures in a production area are too high or endangering the health of workers,” he continued.
Large corporations will be subject to the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive beginning in mid-2027, after it went into effect in July.
Better ventilation and water evaporative cooling systems are potential solutions to cool factories instead of using costly, energy-intensive air conditioning that would raise carbon emissions from businesses.
Given how much heat stress affects productivity, some factory owners would probably be ready to make such expenditures themselves, according to Judge, but the EU regulations emphasize that brands also have an obligation to address the problem.
In order to help employees manage the danger of missing work days due to heatwaves, the research also advised brands and retailers to make investments in health protections and better compensation.
According to the study conducted last year by the Global Labor Institute and asset manager Schroders, extreme heat and flooding could wipe out $65 billion in garment export revenue from Bangladesh, Cambodia, Pakistan, and Vietnam by 2030.
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