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.