Workers at the Centre

We have the duty and opportunity to help create socially sustainable productive environments for the people who work in our supply chain, having a positive impact on the textile industry, which is a powerful engine for economic growth and social progress. To that end we ensure that our suppliers and manufacturers work to improve existing social and labour conditions in every area of production.

We therefore approach the commercial relationship with our suppliers as a shared responsibility. Our goal is to support them in improving supply chain conditions, helping and accompanying our suppliers.

More specifically, our Workers at the Centre strategy seeks to identify and address workers’ needs in the following priority impact areas (PIA), carrying out 46 projects that reached 1,153 suppliers and more than 1,366,420 supply chain workers in 2021.

At Inditex we encourage respect for the freedom of association and right to collective bargaining all along our supply chain. With the overriding goal of improving management-employee dialogue, achieving mature industrial relations and fostering worker satisfaction, this PIA is the chief tool used by Inditex to work alongside other priority stakeholders, such as IndustriALL Global Union, on these aspects.

Our living wages strategy is based on understanding and addressing the needs of our supply chain workers and their families and communities in order to encourage decent working conditions and sustainable productive environments. Here it is worth highlighting our ongoing collaboration with ACT (Action, Collaboration, Transformation), which is one of the bedrocks of our work on the living wages front, together with the work done under the umbrella of the Framework Agreement with IndustriALL Global Union. That strategy is complemented by our work in the areas of responsible procurement practices, improved factory production organisation systems and payroll management systems, the latter including payment digitalisation projects.

This strategy is articulated around three core lines of initiative: health, protection and empowerment.

We approach all three lines of initiative from two points of view: female empowerment and inclusion of the LGBT+ community, at all times with the overriding objective of fostering gender equality end to end and creating a diverse, safe and inclusive place to work.

We prioritise worker health and safety in our supply chain. In 2021 we backed and endorsed the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, known as the International Accord. This new agreement, signed individually by apparel brands and the global unions, IndustriALL Global Union and UNI Global Union, builds from the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh of 2013 and the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh of 2018, agreements we also pushed for.

We have a task force specialised in looking after the needs of these groups of workers and we carry out rigorous analyses to identify their presence in order to evaluate their labour status and create dedicated projects and initiatives focused on protecting them and having a positive impact on their working, social and living conditions. We have entered into alliances with other organisations that can help us tackle the related challenges both locally on the ground as well as more globally.

Social protection is a human right and relates to the universe of policies and programmes designed to reduce and prevent vulnerability over the course of a person’s life. At Inditex we work to make sure all of our supply chain workers are entitled to social benefits and can attain personal well-being.

Raw materials are the basis of all the products sold by Inditex. We take a holistic approach to this PIA, working to identify the specific needs of our workers furthest downstream by carrying out the due diligence procedures designed to ensure their fundamental rights are upheld.