The Life and Building Safety (LABS) Initiative is an industry-driven program where multiple brands and retailers join forces with public organizations to mitigate preventable fire, electrical, and structural safety risks and enhance worker safety in the apparel, footwear, accessories, and textile sectors in key producing countries, including India, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia.
LABS Initiative helps organizations identify key structural, fire and electrical safety risks and provides sustainable solutions and improvements to address those risks and improve overall working conditions.
LABS works in four countries across Asia to create a lasting and measurable impact in the industry.
Factories Onboarded
684
Factories Assessed
669
Safety Training
1588
Workers Reached
1,540,843
Factories Graduated
252
LABS has been working in India since November 2019.
Factories Onboarded
200
Factories Assessed
193
Safety Training
404
Workers Reached
301,072
Factories Graduated
81
LABS has been working in Vietnam since October 2019.
Factories Onboarded
275
Factories Assessed
270
Safety Training
735
Workers Reached
609,699
Factories Graduated
135
LABS has been working in Cambodia since May 2022.
Factories Onboarded
133
Factories Assessed
130
Safety Training
286
Workers Reached
285,519
Factories Graduated
25
LABS has been working in Indonesia since May 2023.
Factories Onboarded
76
Factories Assessed
76
Safety Training
163
Workers Reached
344,553
Factories Graduated
11
We bring stakeholders in the apparel, footwear, accessories, and home-textile industries together to improve working conditions and drive sustainability to create sector-level transformations towards worker safety.
Collaboration with brands and retailers is critical to achieve systemic change and scale impact within the global supply chain. Facilitated by the LABS Secretariat, brands engage with local stakeholders (industry associations, civil society organizations, governments, and institutes) to improve safety policies and provisions.
Factories are a key partner in our efforts to achieve better working conditions in ways that also support businesses.
We actively engage with key organizations in operational countries, including local and national government agencies, industry associations, international institutions, and CSOs to advance safety policies within the industry and embed long-term local and national ownership.
We Strengthened our commitment to safe, fair, and responsible supply chain practices by deepening our engagement with the Life & Building Safety (LABS) Initiative, enrolling 120 factories across key sourcing regions. This initiative supports our efforts to strengthen safety management systems and contributes to improved working conditions across our supply chain. We also expanded our engagement into the soft home category in India, helping extend LABS’ internationally aligned safety framework to additional product categories. Our partnership with LABS continues to reinforce Target’s broader responsible sourcing goals as we work collaboratively to elevate safety, strengthen resilience, and support the wellbeing of workers across our global supply chain.
Director Responsible Sourcing and Sustainable Capabilities, Target
Safety is—and will remain—nonnegotiable for VF, and we view it as a baseline expectation for all of our suppliers. The LABS program has elevated our internal focus on Critical Life Safety by bringing strong teams and deep expertise to the work. Together with industry peers, we’ve been able to leverage our collective influence to drive sustainable change in key sourcing regions, and we’re proud to support LABS’ continued progress and shared goals.
Senior Director – Responsible Sourcing Operations, VF Corporation
Collaboration is at the heart of the Life and Building Safety (LABS) program and fundamental to its success across every country where they operate. As we continue our engagement, we remain focused on working with others to foster a culture of safety and high safety standards throughout supply chains. Our work through LABS goes beyond compliance; it builds skills, strengthens systems, and strives to continuously improve worker safety. Impacting more than 1.3 million workers to date underscores what is possible when collaboration is paired with sustained engagement.
Senior Vice President, Supply Chain & Sourcing Compliance, Walmart
Our partnership with LABS has allowed us to enroll more than 200 factories in a program that identifies and remediates worker safety risks. The initiative’s focus on fire, building and electrical safety management and emphasis on sectoral collaboration has helped us scale our efforts and meaningfully address an urgent need in many apparel factories across the world.
Director – Supplier Sustainability, Gap Inc
