Local to global comments in three languages. Much also from Pitäjänmäki Sockenbacka in Helsinki Helsingfors Finland, as well as from the organisations I participate in. The older content is from my previous blog page which I have now closed. Most of the contents on the earlier pages deals with sustainability, human rights and social responsibility in the global supply chains.
Amazon’s long-lasting labour conflict in Germany raises issues far beyond wages and working conditions. Amazon needs to accept to negotiate with ver.di and to respect European and German working life culture.
The American e-commerce giant refuses to negotiate a collective agreement with ver.di which is the Amazon workers’ trade union, a leading member of Germany’s powerful trade union confederation DGB. According to the union, they make extensive use of time limited employment contracts also when there is no reason for it, and when workers stay quite permanently in their positions. Many wages and other benefits remain below general collective agreement levels even if the workers’ action has already forced management to make some concessions.
Strikes are usually about much more than wages only. For workers to go on strike is a difficult decision and today’s trade unions both know and respect this. The unions know very well that a protracted conflict leads to serious income losses that require a long time to recover, however ‘good’ the result. Here, the workers and their union stand up in defence of German and European social dialogue and collective agreement cultures.
This is not the first time that a U.S. based company wants to play its own game in Europe instead of respecting the rules. Toys”R”Us tried it a few decades ago until it was driven out of Sweden. Wal-Mart got it wrong in Germany, suffered for a few years, and pulled back.
Amazon needs to accept that their German workforce is well organised. They must be prepared to negotiate a collective agreement in good faith, fully respecting International Labour Conventions. In the longer run they will not be able to import an authoritarian human resource management in a culture and environment where social dialogue is widely supported. Many leading German politicians have joined in calling on the company to start negotiating with ver.di and putting an end to this conflict.
This is an example of a large employer forcing a labour conflict by its own behaviour. If the workers and their union would accept management’s refusal to enter into social dialogue and collective agreement negotiations the entire labour relations system could come under pressure.
Not only trade unions should be concerned. Competing employers who approach their workers and their trade unions responsibly have an equal interest to defend themselves. This is shared by society as a whole, particularly in times when social unrest and political instability are increasing also in Europe.
It is no wonder that behaviour like this easily drives polarisation and aggressiveness instead of promoting social dialogue and even cooperation. This will not help Europe to get out of the crisis.
Trading hours don’t affect only shop workers but also society at large. Excessive shop opening hours will force many others to work on Sundays and holidays or late at night. And do we really want all days to be the same, from Monday to Sunday, 365 days a year? More complex than we sometimes reflect on, opening hours cannot be left to market forces alone.
Once again, many shop workers worked on New Year’s Day. Of course, they were not the only ones. There were many others who spent the first day of 2015 at work instead of being with family and friends.
Societies have to function also on important holidays, and many services are needed. Some are clearly essential, others can be discussed. Retail shops provide important services for sure, but is it necessary that they do this 365 days a year, 7 days a week and 24 hours a day?
Trading hours is one of the issues that both business and trade unions, and society at large, need to look carefully at. Accepting that there are different values, traditions, cultures and also interests, we should do this with an open mind.
Retailing is an industry where substantial changes can happen fast. Today, much is about e-commerce. Web-sales continue to gain ground while jobs are lost in traditional commerce.
From the start, e-commerce has been used as an argument for trading hours liberalisation. High street shops and supermarkets cannot compete if they must follow shop opening rules. Trading hours restrictions have outlived themselves. The market and finally the consumers will decide. Limited hours drive customers from shops to the web, the proponents for removing shop opening rules say.
If stores really would be closed when consumers have time to shop this argumentation could make some sense. Many decades ago we could saw them close at 17 or so from Monday to Friday and 14 or 15 or even noon-time on Saturdays. There were serious calls by some unions for closing completely on Saturdays as well, to allow for a five day working week with the weekend free.
Even in the most regulated of environments today’s opening hours give plenty of time for shopping even for those with long working hours.
I cannot see that a regulated shop opening would be the major issue that drives consumers from high streets and supermarkets to the web. Other factors will surely be more important, such as price and assortment.
Some goods and services are just easier to select on the web than in a store. Bookstores and computer shops, home electronics outlets and traditional department stores face serious problems. Supermarket retailing on the internet continues to grow. Music and movies have already moved to electronic sites.
This will go on and traditional retailers will change, or suffer until it may be too late.
Over the years we got used to seeing commerce as a growth sector. It was a major entry road to employment and gave opportunities also for those whose formal education was not all that strong. Today we see shops being closed and staff being cut even where we did not think it would ever happen.
This can not be stopped or slowed down by letting market forces steer shop opening in an unregulated environment. Instead, we could see new problems emerge, for many, and for all of us.
Regulating trading hours is genuinely important for shop workers and others whose jobs are affected. Retailing is a low-wage industry where women form the big majority of the workforce. The negative social effects of excessive opening hours should not be ignored.
Eating from the fridge easily takes over from the Sunday dinner table. Doing and experiencing things as a family is more difficult and the role of parents and homes is undermined whilst everyone agrees that it should be strengthened. Day care centers are closed when they would be needed. To get home from work is difficult if public transport has ended for the day. Late night security risks abound.
The list could be much longer.
Inequalities have reached a level where even the World Economic Forum sees it as the biggest threat to our societies. The divide between those who have and those who don’t is deep and growing. Mass migration creates a third class in many societies. Unemployment is high and soaring.
Xenophobia and racism are on the rise. Young people who have lost hope revolt, and worse.
As this happens, business is taking the place of voters as the source of power. And, what does this have to do with shop opening hours?
The question is whose interests and which values drive the development of societies? Can economic interests be reconciled even better with cultural and social values?
Do we really want to give up our rhythm of life, for a new reality where everything is up and running 365 days a year and 7 days a week, possibly also 24 hours a day? From Monday to Sunday all days would be the same. If retailing goes this way, lots of other functions will have to follow a d extend their operating times. This would affect both the private and the public sectors – and workers.
What about employment then?
It is hard to see how this would promote job creation as retailing depends on the purchasing power of consumers and extending trading hours would hardly bring much added value. What may happen is that small shops, which in many countries already benefit from opening hours exceptions, would be pushed out even faster by larger operators.
There are seldom simple solutions to complex problems. Here we are dealing with a very complicated issue. Removing all regulations could have more negative consequences than positive effects. Changes and adjustments should of course be made when useful and necessary. The tricky thing is then to adapt to realities without losing human and cultural values.
Maybe the European social partners for commerce – UNI-Europa Commerce and EuroCommerce – should do a study on trading hours, accepting that they would be likely to draw conflicting conclusions from the material. At least the issues would be jointly defined, the first step to enable a dialogue.
The influence of the Bangladesh building and fire safety Accord and Alliance on labour conditions in global supply chains should not be underestimated. Despite targeting only a small even if very important part of the supplier landscape, some of their approaches could useful and possible to apply also more broadly.
For obvious reasons, and rightly so, these activities have attracted a lot of attention and considerable resources. It is of course important that this does not happen at the expense of other urgent supply chain needs.
Factories, farms and fisheries in many regions and countries are affected by serious problems. Child labour is still a burning issue, from cotton fields to stone quarries. Trafficking and forced labour remains a huge problem, on construction sites, fishing vessels and in many other activities. Income levels remain far below the acceptable and a living wage seems very hard to reach.
What is often lacking is respect for workers as human beings. Traditional social divides and discrimination combine with profit interests to feed resistance against worker organising, social dialogue and collective agreements. Unless attitudes change and workers’ rights to collective representation get accepted there can be no sustainable improvement of labour conditions.
There are many countries where changes will not take place without clear messages from the outside world. Excluding any groups from efforts to improve the human rights and labour situation in global supply chains would be wrong. Business as well as unions and NGOs can all make important contributions and should all be encouraged to do their part.
Buying brands and retailers need to be seriously engaged, doing their part of implementing the UN Guidelines for Business and Human Rights. Voluntary initiatives and codes of conduct can be useful guidelines for driving concrete action and they should not be belittled. There is much concrete capacity building and remediation going on with supplier companies, together with dedicated CSR schemes and initiatives such as SAI, ETI, FLA, BSCI and others. A professional social auditing industry can provide valuable knowledge about local situations and needs.
As a common business owned platform with a strong stakeholder representation, GSCP works for a general recognition and application of demanding social standards with a focus on bringing about real improvements to supply chain workers.
The GSCP Reference Tool for Auditing Competence wants to make sure that auditing remains credible and serious. Setting minimum professional standards, it supports buyers and their suppliers as well as the auditing industry itself. It helps schemes and initiatives ensure that they offer services at the highest industry standards. Most of all it benefits workers, ensuring that social audits lead to remediation and respect for human dignity at workplaces.
Although we should not in any way underrate the work for better supply chain conditions, we have to keep in mind the huge domestic labour markets where conditions are mostly much worse and less visible. Better labour conditions in export sectors can improve overall standards if there is a political determination.
Helping to make Bangladesh garment factories safer is important. Both programmes – Accord and Alliance – are concrete and already report on results. Initial factory audits have been completed and attention is on real improvements of safety conditions.
These projects work with a tight time schedule and we should soon start to see their real performance. Much will depend on how financing is arranged for the often necessary but also costly changes. Will the financial support commitments by brands and retailers be enough and what are the supplier companies themselves prepared to invest?
The Accord gives much influence and visibility to global trade unions and social campaigners whereas the Alliance is clearly business driven even if there is a civil society participation as well. The Accord reflects the European labour relations culture which is more social dialogue oriented, while the Alliance one is surely affected by the much more problematic US situation. Both are supported by the International Labour Organisation ILO and many consumer country governments.
One joint initiative would of course have been the most effective alternative. This was in fact the intention of the GSCP Executive and Advisory Boards when we took the first initiative and asked the German development agency GIZ to start preparing a fire safety project for Bangladesh and Pakistan. When I suggested to both boards that we should take concrete action I insisted that also IndustriALL Global Union be included.
There was also another building and fire safety initiative on the table, already for a few years. This was developed by American and European labour advocacy NGOs but had failed to attract sufficient support and participation from buyer brands and retailers. These organisations also became part of the GSCP-initiated GIZ process.
At the beginning, the common aim was a joint project. Soon events took another direction when differences emerged about whether the complaints procedure should be based on court proceedings or mediation and arbitration.
Particularly US companies were concerned that they could be challenged in court by hostile campaigners on various grounds, and did not accept this. Some labour unions and NGOs on their side did not trust that a mediation or arbitration procedure would be strong enough to ensure that buyers keep to their commitments. This was clearly affected also by the strained and often hostile labour relations climate in the United States.
At the final stages of project preparations, global union federations and advocacy NGOs took over the initiative from the less well coordinated buyer brands and retailers and began actively and publicly to assemble what is now the Accord. This lead most North American based brands and retailers to detach themselves from the process and develop and launch their own Alliance.
After this complicated process it is good that both projects seem to work reasonably well, side by side. Both are clearly there to bring about real changes in garment industry conditions. Hopefully the Bangladesh government and particularly the employers’ federation will do their part of the job to ensure safe conditions in the country’s garment industry.
Norwegian Peoples Aid – Norsk Folkehjelp – celebrates its 75th Anniversary today. This is an impressive organisation, engaged in an extraordinary way in promoting human rights and social and economic well-being in countries that are particularly in need of global solidarity. In many ways it is very Norwegian, reflecting the deep sense of justice and solidarity so prevalent in its home country.
I say all of this because over the years, as responsible for UNI Commerce Global Union, worked so closely with our Norwegian friends, Norwegian Peoples Aid and others. This was in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where we helped to rebuild civil society after the devastating war in the 1990s, and did our best to support the reconciliation process between people in the different parts of this badly torn country.
Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina suffered heavily from the war. Land mines were still all over the place when we came there for the fist time in January 1997, and relations between population groups, separated by the river, were tense. Norsk Folkehjelp did a lot for bringing back a sense of normalcy in the life of this historical town, also together with Norway’s commerce and office workers’ trade union HK.
Our work went far beyond that of an ordinary project, thanks above all to Norway’s commerce and office workers’ trade union Handel og Kontor – HKiN.
The project description will be a separate story, or rather many stories. It ranged from building up viable trade unions which are doing a remarkable job today, to bringing kids from divided Mostar to play football – soccer – in the world’s largest tournament, in Oslo. To do this in the middle of a major and bitter Norwegian airline strike, where both the pilots and the company agreed to fly in the teams for free, is something that will always stay with me as a superb expression of solidarity and responsibility.
I really don’t wonder why my friend Suleiman Hrle, at the time trade union confederation president in Sarajevo, said that they should raise a statue of HK President Sure Arntzen. This was when my friend Sture had convinced Norway’s Prime Minister Thorbjörn Jagland about the need to help the country’s workers to rebuild their union house, Dom Sindikata. It had received over 100 artillery hits during the siege of the Bosnian capital.
Sture Arntzen, President of Norway’s commerce and office workers’ trade union HK, speaks at one of our first meetings with Bosnian trade unionists. Until Norway helped renovate this building badly damaged by artillery during the siege of Sarajevo, conditions for the unions and their people were pretty bad. The project that we started in 1996 was done under the banner of FIET, predecessor of UNI Global Union.
From the start, the HK engagement was a broad one. Board members and representatives from union locals got personally involved, and very broad activities developed in various parts of the country. The other Nordic countries joined in, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and Sweden.
Very remarkably, it was not only the unions but also the commerce sector employers who joined the efforts. The major project to rebuild the work of the leading commerce college in Sarajevo, destroyed completely during the war, would not have happened without the strong engagement of the CEO of Denmark’s commerce employers Sören B. Henriksen.
Todays Dom Sindikata hosts most of the country’s trade unions, among them the commerce union. The young people that run this union are doing an impressive job under still very difficult conditions, with high unemployment and continued insecurity about the future. The support from Norway has been and still is decisive for their continued existence and success.
Still, this solidarity action was very much about Sture and his friends in HK and Norway in general. Their engagement continues, which we saw so clearly and concretely also during the terrible floods in Bosnia and Herzegovina last spring. Our friends in Sarajevo – Mersiha, Fikret, Nerma and others – traveled under difficult conditions both in the federation and the serb republic, bringing urgently needed concrete help to working people and their families.
So Norwegian Peoples Aid? They were always there, involved. Much of what was done and is done would never have been possible without their assistance.
I was so impressed of their work on mine clearing, and on them very concretely helping to build up the necessities of life in so many communities that seemed forgotten by the outside world. Nobody was too small or too insignificant to help and support for our Norwegian friends.
The 75th Anniversary of this great organisation is a good opportunity to say thank you, and to send warm congratulations to them and our Norwegian trade union friends in HK, friends with a golden heart.
Social Accountability International meets this week in Palo Alto in California. Hosted by IT -giant Hewlett Packard, the SAI Advisory Board will confirm major changes and improvements in the SA8000 Social Standard and its world-wide application.
SA8000 is not only the best known social supply chain standard, but together with SAI also the most advanced major initiative. Brands and retailers and their suppliers use SA8000 to ensure that human rights are respected and proper labour conditions applied when goods and services are produced.
Working at a SAI Advisory Board meeting in Florence, Italy in 2011. Board member Robin Cornelius at the left is the founder and chairman of Switcher, a socially and environmentally ground-breaking Swiss textile company. Here together with SAI President Alice Tepper Marlin. The Advisory board is tripartite, with representatives of business, trade unions and NGOs and independent academia.
The Standard as well as the entire SAI system does much more than verifies that International Labour Organisation ILO Standards and national labour legislation and collective agreements are respected. While social audits continue to be important and violations need to be acted on, emphasis is already on helping suppliers build social and labour management systems.
The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights require companies and other actors to apply due diligence in their activities to make sure that human rights are not violated. Core minimum labour standards are set in ILO International Labour Conventions and Recommendations.
To respect and apply these global rules, employers need to have management systems. SAI helps suppliers to build up these resources, through training and other capacity building activities. Much of it is done through SAI’s Social Fingerprint program.
The Social Fingerprint concept is especially innovative, helping workplaces to develop their social compliance with SA8000 and build up their sustainability management systems. It aims at making sure that remediation of human rights and labour conditions will lead to lasting results and a continuous growth process at workplaces, finally serving both companies and their workers.
In addition, Social Fingerprint serves the new and improved SA8000 certification process, linking auditing and certification to remediation in a unique way, helping to build capacity and social compliance management systems.
With SAI President Alice Tepper Marlin at a corporate social responsibility conference that we arranged in Helsinki in 2006, together with the Finnish social partners in commerce and leading retailer Kesko.
Working in the major producer regions and countries is often complicated. Cultural, social and economic conditions are generally highly different from those in the consumer countries of the west. Finding the right balance is important, between confidence and control, and between encouraging and demanding remediation and change.
For many years, I have followed the work and activities of SAI teams, be they at headquarters in New York or out in the regions where people work in supplier factories and farms. As a typically European understatement I can say that I am really impressed. A superb combination of commitment and professionalism by the SAI people has lead to better conditions at numerous difficult workplaces.
SAI and its ground-breaking work has influenced the whole concept of corporate social responsibility, in many positive ways. Today, its multi-stakeholder approach to solving issues and helping to build up a better working life is an ‘industry standard’, also for business driven schemes. When Alice Tepper Marlin created SAI some 15 years ago there was often not even a dialogue, not to speak about concern for social supply chain matters.
To apply the SA8000 Standard and to work with SAI calls for businesses to be really committed, be they suppliers or buying brands or retailers. Of course, there must be a balance between time and expenses, and reliability and results. SAI has knowingly positioned itself at the upper end of this quality scale.
Compared with most other schemes and initiatives, SAI does lead the way. An example of this is the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI, which today joins together over 1,400 mainly European brands and retailers.
In a process which I actively supported and engaged in, BSCI and SAI created close links with SA8000 as the common base. The standard and the system to apply it is still very much the reference point for the Brussels based initiative and its own code and activities.
Theis week’s SAI Advisory Board meeting in Palo Alto is particularly important also in other ways. I do really regret not being able to participate this time.
Alice Tepper Marlin who created SAI and is its President has decided to retire as the organisation’s chief executive officer at the end of next year. Eileen Kaufman, her closest colleague and Co-CEO will take her retirement at the end of this year.
Eileen Kaufman who retires from her position as Co-CEO at the end of the year has played a central role in developing SAI into a leading initiative in the global sustainability landscape. “She has been a key leader in advancing SAI’s ambitious mission and a soul mate” says SAI founder and president Alice Tepper Marlin, acknowledging Eileen’s great contributions. Here she is at an Advisory Board meeting in 2007 in Hamburg, Germany.
Working with Alice and Eileen has always been and always is both pleasant and inspiring. Their commitment, knowledge and skills are second to none in the CSR community which I have benefited enormously from in a continuous intellectually demanding learning process.
Also with this natural generation change, both Alice and Eileen will have a lot to contribute to the continuing work of SAI, Alice being the founder hopefully continuing as President of SAI, even if in a new and different kind of a role.
Most important is of course the difference that SAI has made for so many workers and their families in the global supply chains. The issues on the meeting table in Palo Alto – and particularly the impressive preparation work that I have observed from close up – show that SAI and the SA8000 Social Standard will continue to be both at the center and at the cutting edge when sustainability and social responsibility find their place at the core of global supply chains.
Income inequality tops the ten biggest challenges that we face. This is not a statement by trade unions or labour advocacy organisations, but tops the major trends for 2015 identified in a fresh World Economic Forum Report.
It is a sobering experience to look at the report’s graphics on how much the share of the national incomes of the richest 1 % really has grown during the last 20 or so years.
Hardly surprising, the United States is a particularly extreme case of this inequality, but also Australia and Sweden – and some others – show results that they can hardly be proud of. It would be interesting to measure how much of this has been due to political changes in countries that have traditionally been considered as rather egalitarian welfare states.
Lack of awareness can not be the reason for failing to act on this:
“According to the 2014 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, in the seven Sub-Saharan African nations polled over 90% of respondents regard the gap between rich and poor as a big problem; in the United States, almost 80% do.”
Looking forward, the report cautions that particularly Asia and the Pacific may face a high risk of rising inequality, although this will be true also in the other parts of the world.
With its enormous convening power and influence WEF is surely making an impact by highlighting these problems. The host of the annual Davos Summit meetings points at where solutions can be found:
“We know what we need: inclusive economies in which men and women have access to decent employment, legal identification, financial services, infrastructure and social protection, as well as societies where all people can contribute and participate in global, national and local governance. It is now time for action, in order to leave no one behind and bring everyone forward with a life of dignity.”
The step to decisive action is still a long and difficult one.
Four policy areas stand out when the experts’ opinions are summarized: Redistribution, taxation, education and jobs creation.
This new reporting on income inequalities is definitely something to read and to contemplate on, as are the nine other trends that WEF lists for the next year.
The Global Social Responsibility Programme GSCP meeting at UN Headquarters in New York was a timely and concrete opportunity for business and stakeholders to discuss and plan their own contributions to dealing with this huge problem. The next months will see more concrete action being launched, hopfeully with a big relevance for many of those who are really low down on the world’s income ladders.
