Dive Brief:

• The Swedish clothing retailer H&M announced last week that it will push to ensure that workers in its factories receive living wages in countries such as Bangladesh and Cambodia.
• H&M expects to see the initiative reach 750 factories, covering 850,000 workers and 60% of its production operations by 2018.
• The company will have to make some changes to facilitate the push, including giving fewer large orders and committing to orders over longer periods of time to provide factory owners with more certainty to plan around.

Dive Insight:

Dangerous conditions and factory fatalities have attracted a lot of negative attention for clothing brands in the past year, and H&M is taking an assertive step here to change the conditions on the ground where its garments are made.

The company should get a lot of credit for its impatience. Waiting on local governments to take action would be the easy route here, but H&M seems committed to driving some concrete changes.