"Harvard, Levi Strauss, U.S. think tank in blockchain tie-up on worker welfare", 24 January 2019

Harvard University’s public health graduate school, U.S. think-tank New America, and American apparel company Levi Strauss & Co... announced... a collaboration to develop a blockhain-based system designed to augment outside auditors of factory health and safety with self-reporting by workers.

Three factories in Mexico producing goods for Levi Strauss and employing 5,000 workers will be the first to use the blockchain-powered survey in 2019.

Blockchain, which first emerged as the system powering bitcoin, is a shared database maintained by a network of computers connected to the internet...

Essentially, the plan is to put an annual worker survey on the blockchain in what the participants called a crucial first step in transparent evaluation of working conditions in factories...

“For the last 25 years, work in supply chains has been monitored mainly by audits,” said Dr. Eileen McNeely, director of Harvard T.H. Chan’s Sustainability and Health Initiative... McNeely said this system alone is not effective. “A distributed system of inquiry on the blockchain that goes right to the source (workers) offers a new solution,”...