For a year or more I have not been an active blogger – understatement, I know – but focused on other things. On a personal level I have moved home, town and country and am settling down in my native Helsinki in Finland. I still retain important links to Switzerland where I have lived and worked the last 26 years and where I stay with my daughter’s family when I am there.
As to working, I have written a comprehensive feasibility report on a proposed Fairtrade Textile Standard. This I did for the German development ministry BMZ, through the development agency GIZ. The essence was that this initiative should be supported, but also that Fairtrade must make sure that it is applied in a credible, professional and cost-effective way. Cooperation with corporate social responsibility schemes and others must be an important part of their approach.
The report which is written in English is of course freely available. I will mail it on request.
To follow up on this project on a more personal level I have accepted an invitation from Fairtrade International to participate in the work of their textile standard advisory committee.
My active participation on the GSCP Advisory Board and the SAI SA8000 Board of Directors continues. Like for other organisations that engage themselves for decent conditions in global supply chains, both of these have spent much time on improving and tightening up the requirements on social auditing. The SA8000 Social Standard has also seen some major improvements, as a result of intensive working group and board work.
Otherwise I am following and also working on more general working life issues which look into the future of employment and social relations in the industrialised world itself.
So this could be the moment to wake up this blog from its recent sleep, and perhaps broaden the perspective a bit from the global supply chain issues.
I am also on Twitter and on Facebook and of course on LinkedIn.