ILO, Nike Collaborate to Improve Road Safety

A joint initiative by the International Labor Organization’s (ILO) Vision Zero Fund and Nike aims to reduce deaths and injuries among garment and footwear workers during their commute to work. The collaboration seeks to develop a common and standardized approach to reducing road accidents, while also creating practical and easy-to-use guidance materials on safe commuting, as reported by the UN.

“Existing legislation and enforcement mechanisms tend to focus on vehicle drivers, which falls short of providing sustainable solutions. That's why we are excited about the partnership with Nike,” said Ockert Dupper, Global Program Director, Vision Zero Fund. The fund aims to prevent injuries and illnesses in workplaces across the whole global supply chain.

Through this partnership, ILO and Nike aim to create a Theory of Change that will increase safety among garment and footwear workers. They aim to understand the most common causes behind commuting accidents affecting these workers, which could include long-distance traveling, the use of lesser safe means of transportation such as motorcycles and sharing the road with heavy vehicles. Commercial vehicles are involved in between 10-22 percent of all traffic accidents around the world. 

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1.3 million people die and over 50 million get injured in traffic accidents globally each year. In Mexico, 301,678 road accidents occurred in 2020, of which 81.3 percent involved material damages, 17.6 percent injured victims and 1.1 percent caused the death of at least one person, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography (INEGI), as reported by MBN. 

The COVID-19 pandemic changed many standards pertaining to the workplace, increasing the prevalence of remote work but only for some professions. Remote work brings many advantages but has also led to an increase in mental health issues and the loss of income for many workers. “For employees, an absence of training in telework skills (only 8 percent of home office workers received this kind of training) and a decrease in their paycheck became the usual situation. The pandemic took a toll on workers' health and gave way to more complicated scenarios; for example, the emergence of another silent pandemic, consisting of a variety of mental health problems,” Jorge Merida Puga, Director General, Advisory Network for Wellbeing, wrote in MBN.