- On 15 October 2025, the Clean Clothes Campaign (CCC) released new guidance called Heat and Garment Workers’ Rights: Fashioning a Just Transition. The guidance flags ten garment-producing countries at risk from heat stress – India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Brazil, Cambodia, the Philippines, Uganda and Serbia.
- The report sets out four main recommendations, each with action points for governments, suppliers and brands: (1) Protect workers’ health and safety, (2) Safeguard livelihoods, (3) Protect rights regardless of temperature and (4) Reduce heat risk through climate action.
- ADA, Due Diligence Design’s global risk assessment database, includes heat stress as a key occupational safety and health issue, and integrates technical data and statistics on specific countries from the ILO and other sources.
Key recommendations for companies include
- Integrating heat-related socio-economic risks into human rights due diligence, including assessing vulnerable workplaces.
- Engaging with trade unions to address heat stress.
- Joining and strengthen the International Accord by supporting expanded factory inspections that explicitly cover heat risks.
- Protecting workers’ pay and adjusting production targets and hours during heat waves, and ensuring full sickness and injury benefits for heat-related illness. Workers who report heat risks or refuse to work in temperatures that threaten their health or safety should be protected from retaliation.
- Putting in place contingency plans for extreme heat events and not suddenly withdrawing from countries.
Note that this is not a full overview of all recommendations within the report. We also recommend that companies review the ILO Heat at Work (2024) report which provides a comprehensive overview of heat stress across multiple countries and sectors.