Avainsana: GSCP

Julkaistu

Social auditing in global supply chains is an essential tool for defending human rights and improving labour conditions

Demands to give up social auditing in global supply chains continue to emerge in different connections. Part of a political debate, they have not contained any realistic proposals about how to substitute these audits with other ways of gathering the information needed for improving conditions.

There have also been regular calls for opening up audit reports by making them public.

Publishing social audit results would give unions, labour advocacy organisations and others a better chance to intervene on behalf of workers when they see or feel that conditions need to be addressed.

To build up their involvement is a valid aspiration of these players and should not be brushed aside. A broad cooperation can indeed add to the impact of sustainability work where the key objectives are usually so widely shared.

More transparency could add to the relevance of social auditing as a tool that helps to protect human rights and ensure decent employment and working conditions. How to apply this so that the system continues to protect workers and others who provide confidential information to auditors is of key concern.

We can of course not forget that also the audited suppliers’ rights have to be protected, as have those of others involved. To make any changes in social auditing principles has to be approached with utmost care.

Moving from straight-forward ‘yes-or-no’ certification of labour conditions to a more nuanced and detailed audit reporting could well be one solution. Even more important is to link audit reporting directly to capacity building and remediation at supplier workplaces. After all, protecting human rights and securing decent labour conditions form the objective of all these activities.

Social Accountability International SAI has recently revised its SA8000 Social Standard and linked workplace certification directly to capacity building and remediation through its Social Fingerprint program. This is an excellent example of how creating direct and effective links between auditing, certification and remediation can be concretely and systematically approached.

There has also been much impatience among unions and others who say that they have failed to see even urgently needed changes to take place.

We have seen isolated failures of social auditing, but also some more systemic problems, sometimes unexpected until new kinds of situations have emerged. The auditing industry and the cooperating partners in the CSR community need to show that they are capable of handling these issues through more stringent rules and controls. In fact, much has been done, but not always well communicated to a broader public.

The 15 years or so of business driven and multi-stakeholder corporate social responsibility CSR activities have definitely brought improvements to supplier working conditions. Buying brands and retailers know that they must pay serious attention to the social aspects of their purchasing activities. This was not the case before Social Accountability International with its SA8000 Standard and others entered the scene.

The UN Guiding Principles would not have come about without the groundwork done also by the voluntary CSR schemes and initiatives. That Harvard Professor John Ruggie and his team were able to build a consensus around the responsibility of governments and business to protect human rights at work was a remarkable achievement. What was needed was that an important part of the business community already accepted their obligation and interest to approach their supply chains with due diligence.

CSR schemes and initiatives  are surely not the only forces behind these changes. Trade unions and labour advocacy organisations have done their part, as have many others. But changing business attitudes has been closely linked with the emergence of the CSR community, including social auditors.

The social auditing system itself has been far from flawless.

There will always be situations where social audits miss even significant problems or shortcomings at audited workplaces. There can be many reasons for this, one being that these audits cannot cover all factors that affect the work situation. Structural building safety, which in a tragic way proved to be a major and serious problem in the Bangladesh garment industry, is one of those where other approaches and tools were needed and also implemented.

Shortcomings and sometimes even unacceptable performances by individual auditors and companies can of course harm the whole industry. There could be unrealistic expectations towards social auditing, often related to new and unexpected situations. Audits cannot uncover all the deficiencies at a workplace, something which should be more effectively communicated.

It is always hard to find the correct balance between audit quality and costs, an issue which will surely never disappear. How can social auditors spend enough time both on audits and reporting and still keep the paying customers on board? Here, striving for the perfect can threaten the good, and compromising quality can undermine the reliability of the whole system.

There have been individual examples of poor or insufficient internal controls. While not common, they have caused both accreditation bodies and the auditing entities themselves to tighten up their rules. The auditing industry and the CSR community as a whole are well aware of the risks and have done much to control them.

The Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP auditing guidelines which auditing companies can benchmark against through an equivalence process are useful tools for improving social audit performance. They reflect a broad consensus between business and stakeholders about how the auditing system can be kept reliable.

In many parts of the world it will take very long before we see organised workers and their trade unions engage in social dialogue and collective agreement relationships with their employers, in an atmosphere or good faith and mutual respect.

Auditing remains an important part of efforts to secure human rights at work and  improve labour conditions in global supply chains. How could brands and retailers, their suppliers, and concerned stakeholders get the information that they need for remediation and capacity building if this tool did not exist?

Instead of saying no to social audits we should continue to develop and improve these activities.

Workers, trade unions, community organisations and others need to be more involved in monitoring conditions. Buying brands and retailers need to be an active part of this work and cannot outsource their due diligence obligations to others.

Most importantly, the audits have to be effectively and properly linked to and followed up by remediation and corrective action where a need for this has been identified.

Julkaistu

Campaigner field days don’t help the launch of building and fire safety activities in Bangladesh which will require broad cooperation between all those involved

When the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI marked its 10th Anniversary last week in Brussels, the Clean Clothes Campaign ‘congratulated’ them with a veritable broadside attack in media.

Last weekend, just days before we expect to be informed about how concrete action will start to improve building and fire safety in the Bangladeshi garment industry, the International Labor Rights Forum ILRF in the US seems embarked on anti-capitalist campaigning and demonstrations against leading US retailers, for having chosen other approaches.

As such there is nothing wrong with this. Campaigning is acceptable and sometimes even important. Still, there are some question marks.

Very many of the European retailers and brands that signed up to the Bangladesh Building and Fire Safety Accord, if not most of them, are BSCI members and are actively engaged in this organisation. Many of them were in Brussels, and the CCC message was clearly badly received even if not publicly raised or commented. If the intention  is to prepare the ground for a concrete and efficient cooperation in Bangladesh, the CCC attack was both misguided and poorly timed.

These campaigners in the Netherlands should reflect on  how they can best contribute to a good start of project activities and try to control the temptation to continuously go after brands and retailers, giving the impression that one of the reasons is that they are brands and retailers, and represent big capital. This is not a good time for that kind of campaigning.

The ILRF campaigning against Wal-Mart and GAP – and now other retailers as well – has other motives and grounds of course, but is equally questionable as it is pulling the focus off practical project work in Bangladesh. If the aim is to build some kind of even minimal mutual confidence to enable cooperation and coordination on the ground in Bangladesh, then anti-imperialist field days like this just before the project launch will not help.

Yes I do of course strongly support the Accord that was finally introduced by IndustriALL. After all, I have been engaged myself in bringing the coalition and activities about.

This is not the same ‘Accord’ as some of these campaigner organisations were unsuccessfully pushing for since a few years back. It is a new creation, developed in cooperation with leading global retailers and brands, at the initiative of companies and stakeholders in Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP. When IndustriALL joined this process, facilitated by the German development authorities, a coalition started to form. Of course the 2011 campaigner driven project plan was one of the elements used when the Accord was created, but not more.

It is regrettable that a broad US brand and retailer participation fell on the clause on the Accord that deals with the possibility of litigation in courts. As I am not a US lawyer I cannot take a stand on whether the companies’ fears of campaigning through the courts are justified or not. Here the enterprises and the campaigners disagree. A reality is that most large US retailers and brands have stayed outside the Accord and launched their own initiative.

The next months and years will prove if this US approach is serious or not. The pressure on the companies involved to show that they can produce real results will be high, as it will also on the Accord.

It is a good sign that IndustriALL Global Union has continued to keep its sight set on what needs to be done to secure the success of the Accord. Without this organisation, a broad coalition like the one we see today would never have been possible.

Perhaps it is time for the unions to calm down their most eager NGO supporters, and help IndustriALL and the committed companies to get a good start for their activities. Nobody can afford internal strife in a situation where the challenges are as big as here, not the least in convincing the local players of the seriousness of the initiative.

Julkaistu

BSCI celebrates its first 10 years as a success story that needs to be vigilant about new challenges and a fast developing labour environment

If some still seriously think that the time for  corporate social responsibility schemes is over, they should take a close look at BSCI, which in these days celebrates its tenth anniversary. Through its formidable convening power, this business driven initiative with a strong stakeholder participation has signed up already over 1,000 brands, retailers and other traders in concrete work for better supply chain conditions.

As Jan Eggert, Achim Lohrie and some others started to work on this Business Social Compliance Initiative ten years ago, there was much skepticism in both business and labour circles. Some brands and retailers saw this as a German ‘operation’, and many unions suspected foul intentions behind this employer action.

I admit that I was among those that looked with some suspicion at this process. However, my talks with Jan Eggert convinced me that the companies in the Foreign Trade Association FTA who were behind this process were serious, and that trade unions and other stakeholders should lend their support to it. This was also confirmed by my organisation UNI-Europa Commerce, who agreed that we engage ourselves in the BSCI Stakeholder Board. I am pleased that Fabrice Warneck of UNI-Europa Commerce continues to be a board member, which shows social responsibility for supply chain workers and is surely a good decision also for his members.

To link BSCI with Social Accountability International SAI and its SA8000 Social Standard was an important decision by the European brands and retailers. That gave credibility to the BSCI code and work, SAI being a respected multistakeholder organisation with its widely recognised and renowned SA8000 Social Standard.

Originally the intention was that companies committed to the BSCI code, which to some parts was lighter and less rigid to apply, would all end up fully implementing the more demanding SA8000. This has not really worked, probably also because of the almost explosive growth of BSCI. The aim has also been overtaken by the move of focus in the whole CSR community from codes and audits to capacity building and remediation. Here, BSCI has done a lot.

When the relation between SAI and BSCI needed to enter a more structured stage, some new problems came up. This was so particularly in SAI where opinions were split about going forward through a formal agreement. It was really all  about whether the BSCI Code  should need to include the right of supply chain workers to a living wage instead of – as it still does – talking about “legal minimum and/or industry standards”.

When we decided on this issue in the SAI Advisory Board, the union representation was split. I was in favour of an agreement with BSCI, which for me then represented an important group of companies where our unions and union members worked.

For the general secretary of the textile and garment workers international Neil Kearney the situation looked different, which I well understood. He saw the lack of a clear clause on a living wage as a major flaw which was weakening the position of the workers whom he represented. I had many and long discussions about this with him, we agreed that a living wage definition is necessary and essential, but had different views on whether this should lead to refusing the agreement with BSCI.

The multistakeholder Advisory Board of SAI finally voted in favour of a more formal cooperation with BSCI. This lead Neil Kearney to leave the board, reluctantly I know, also as I was sitting next to him at the meeting where this took place. It is good that he and his organisation did continue to work closely with SAI also after this.

There has been some public misrepresentation about why Neil and the textile workers left the SAI Advisory Board so I thought it useful to tell what really happened.

Perhaps the time now is indeed better for the BSCI to have another look at living wage issues. They are complicated for sure, but as the situation in Bangladesh shows, they must nevertheless be addressed.

IndustriALL Global Union deserves a lot of support for its work on behalf of the disadvantaged workers in the global supply chains and this is definitely one of the issues. We have seen that practical solutions are not always easy to find when many brands and retailers use the same factories. HM chief executive Karl-Johan Persson is one of the corporate leaders who have signaled preparedness to do something real here if the solutions can be found. BSCI could perhaps work with IndustriALL – and with the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP to bring in a global dimension – to see how non-competitive improvements could be made while preserving a level playing field in the industry and between producer countries.

It would of course be easy to criticise both BSCI and other CSR initiatives for all what they have failed to achieve, and in fact many campaigners do this. Although not as aggressive as the US based campaigner attacks on SAI, BSCI has received its fair share of campaigner criticism as have all voluntary schemes and initiatives. As long as the criticism is honest and concrete and aims at improving conditions, it should be welcomed. Shareholder and other corporate interests often weigh in the other direction, so this push is definitely needed however unfair and irritating it may feel at times.

Looking at BSCI, one should reflect whether the Bangladesh building and fire safety alliance would ever have taken off unless BSCI had prepared the ground by mainstreaming supply chain social responsibility in European commerce. Probably not, as it would have been much more difficult for companies to find common ground and a concrete approach.

When IndustriALL and other Global Union Federations invited buyers to sign up, the large brands and retailers had already worked out an advanced project concept. This was initiated within the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP already in September last year, on my suggestion after the devastating Ali Enterprise fire in Pakistan, and a project had been drafted in cooperation with the German development agency GIZ. Thus, a common view could be found, which was good, as was the cooperation between the social partners. It is regrettable that the issue of legal litigation was allowed to become an insurmountable obstacle for most US companies to join, which lead them to approach the same tasks through their own project. Without BSCI, we could have seen perhaps different but still similarly important complications in Europe as well.

Like for all initiatives, the world after the Pakistan and Bangladesh catastrophes probably looks different for the people in BSCI than what it used to. I can see that BSCI – as well as SAI – has already addressed some issues where improvements are urgently needed. Subcontracting social audits are restricted or even forbidden and controls are stricter. This is going in the right direction, and I am sure that other changes will follow.

I have made some suggestions myself in SAI, where I am a Board of Directors member, as part of the ongoing revision of the SA8000 Standard. These include changing the Certifications. Instead of just receiving an SA8000 Certificate after a successful audit procedure, a workplace should get a scorecard that gives more information about the conditions in key areas and also tells where improvements must still be made.

The workers have to have a more important role in helping to monitor workplace conditions, which would normally be done through organising in trade unions and entering into a structures social dialogue with the employer. However, as long as freedom of association is respected, it is up to the workers themselves to form or join a union if they want to. Even if the workers would choose not to organise, arrangements can and should be made for worker engagement.

It should be made very clear what a social audit system is able to do, and what not. Construction safety and similar issues are outside this scope and this has to be clearly spoken out. A more detailed score card type of certification – when certifications are used – helps also to achieve this clarity.

The whole audit process requires more transparency. This is also a question that BSCI, SAI, GSCP and other influential partners in the CSR community need to look at, to find a common and uniform solution. All suppliers may not like this, but they just need to adapt to the inevitable.

When BSCI celebrates its first ten years in Brussels this coming Tuesday and Wednesday, Jan Eggert, Lorenz Berzau, Olga Orozco and the whole team have all reason to be proud of the results that they have achieved. Together with UK-based ETI and the French large retailer group, BSCI has made corporate social responsibility in supply chains into a mainstream and core concern for Europe’s multinationals and other traders. Acknowledging that very much is still left to do, conditions in supply chains would be worse if BSCI would not have existed.

Julkaistu

GSCP India Workshop on Capacity Building shows importance of joining buyers, suppliers and stakeholders in work for human rights and decent labour conditions

Lack of knowledge and skills is a major reason for many working life problems, also in global supply chains. It is clearly not the only reason, but perhaps more common and important than we often think. All of us who have concrete experience from labour relations know that adding to knowledge and skills usually has a positive effect on workplace attitudes, which helps to improve labour conditions and raise productivity.

The GSCP Workshop on Capacity Building which started in India today is a good example of how bringing together buying brands and retailers with their suppliers can promote respect for human rights and decent working conditions. There are many stakeholder organisation present as well, who are dedicated to human rights and social justice, including trade union representatives from IndustriALL Global Union.

Everyone may not always agree on how things could best be improved, but there should be a fair consensus about objectives, which invites to dialogue and cooperation.

When also commercial buying conditions take into account social standards, capacity building plays a central role in enabling employers and workers to set things right through mutual respect, dialogue and cooperation.

I participated myself in a regional GSCP country meeting in Shenzhen in China about a year ago, where it was the buyer companies who met to discuss these issues. What struck me as something very positive was the openness that these professional buyers showed to including social considerations in their supplier relations. I am not naive, we are only at a starting point and much will have to happen before the global trade systems support a fair treatment of workers and their families.

Of course I am partial as well. To be member of the GSCP Advisory Board would make no sense unless I supported the aims, objectives and work of this common CSR and environmental standards platform. More than that, I could not have involved myself in this work had it not been for the strong support of commerce trade unions from all over the world, when I was head of UNI Commerce Global Union. The unions understood that to defend and promote their rights, the supply chain workers needed the support of CSR schemes and initiatives. Of course, the final trade union aim is that employers and workers can engage in an organised social dialogue and collective agreement relationship, supported by effective government authorities and a developed labour legislation.

GSCP has now completed its basic toolkit which can be used by companies, CSR initiatives and schemes, and others, to establish and ensure correct human rights and social conditions in supply chains. All this material is freely available on the www.gscpnet.com website, an amazing resource for all those who want to approach these issues in a serious and professional way. They can be used for benchmarking, but also as inspiration and guidance for improvement. Through the GSCP Equivalence Process, companies and others can make sure that their approaches and work is compatible with the highest existing standards.

The GSCP Workshop in India shows the way that companies as well as codes, schemes and initiatives can move forward from social auditing to capacity building, and remediation. GSCP has made a major contribution to driving upward convergence of standards and mutual recognition of social audits. This should now make it possible to direct more attention and resources to where they can really make a difference – at the supplier workplaces.  Hopefully the workshop will help to generate both further capacity building and the use of this added capacity for the benefit of supply chain workers who still so often toil under poor conditions.

Julkaistu

Social campaigners should take a thinking time-out and seek cooperation with the CSR community instead of conflict

Last week saw two important campaigner statements that were highly distrustful and suspicious about business sector commitments and remarkably negative towards corporate social responsibility programmes and initiatives. Both referred to last year’s devastating factory fires in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Clean Clothes Campaign CCC came out with a new booklet, and former International Labor Rights Forum ILRF Executive Director Bama Athreya expressed her opinions in a Huffington Post blog article.

Fatal Fashion is a Clean Clothes Campaign CCC publication that has been written together with SOMO, a research institute close to this Netherlands-based organisation. The booklet is not really a research report even if it contains much essential information on the two tragic factory fires and the follow up by buyers and different stakeholders. It is equally much a statement by the authors on how they would like to see the follow up.

It should be no surprise that global buyers are severely criticised in the CCC booklet, and there are surely valid reasons for that. Much of the factual criticism is correct, although a fundamental mistrust against business filters through also when some targeted companies have clearly shown that suppliers and agents have acted in ways which have been both unauthorised and hidden from the buyers.

To lay the blame for the fires on global buyers cannot be correct as the final responsibility is with factory owners and managers, and the government authorities. Another thing is then  that the setup of these business relations requires serious attention and probably some very fundamental changes to lower or even remove the risk for a future tragedies like these taking place. It is also fair to ask buyers to show the necessary solidarity by contributing in substantial ways to compensating victims and their families. We know that this has nomally been done although there may be discussion and differing opinions about amounts and modes of support.

As so often is the case, generalisations and conclusions are regrettably drawn with a free hand. Faults and even wrong behaviour in individual cases and by individual companies are turned into sweeping allegations. This moves too much focus to accusations and the many concrete and serious suggestions for improving factory conditions don’t get the attention that they should.

Of course, the global supply chains that provide cheap goods for consumers in developed markets are fundamentally problematic and frequently unfair. There is, however, no rolling back of this international trading, that would not even be the right thing to demand. What we need to work for is that the economic participation of less developed regions and countries comes with a clear and strong dimension of human rights and social well-being.

Much effort has gone into convincing business that this must be a serious concern in all supply chain activities. Social campaigners have been instrumental in bringing about this thinking. Important contributions have been made within many companies themselves, large and small, where ethically motivated managers and workers can take pride in their achievements. What starts to be mainstream thinking among world brands and retailers – with all shortcomings that still exist – has not been there for long.

Initiatives such as Social Accountability International SAI which was founded in 1997 have played an incredibly important role in raising awareness and providing business with the tools to protect and defend human rights and social conditions in their supply chains. This engagement by SAI president Alice Tepper Marlin and the SA8000 people has actually been there much longer, with the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP) founded already in 1969. The tone that some campaigners are using when referring to this leading multistakeholder initiative, where also trade unionists participate, tells more about themselves than about the issues that they want to raise.

No other organisation has addressed the shortcomings of CSR initiatives and supply chain social auditing as seriously as SAI and Social Accountability Accreditation Services SAAS have recently done. To bluntly reject the importance of the changes that are already on their way, without presenting any alternatives, is not a credible approach.

I admit that I am concerned over how the tense labour relations in the United States affect the global scene as well. Bama Athreya, who used to lead the International Labor Rights Forum ILRF, wrote in a Huffington Post blog article last week :

” The numerous private monitoring and certification groups that have crowded this space in recent years need to get out of the way, and recognize that competing for brands’ business in Bangladesh will not help to solve the bigger challenges.  They need to cede the space to the US government here.  Consumer-facing advocacy groups need to provide consumers with information about which companies are following the leader, and which are refusing to play. “

Although it deals with the aftermath of the Pakistan and Bangladesh fire catastrophes, the pitch of this message cannot be misunderstood. Buying brands and retailers ” that have crowded this space in recent years need to get out of the way ” and make space for the U.S. Government and campaigner organisations to take care of the challenges.

It is interesting to note that neither CCC nor Ms Athreya pay much attention to the role of trade unions, which after all are the only legitimate representatives for workers when it comes to labour relations. If employers are removed from the scene to create space for governments and social campaigners, then also unions will lose an important part of their influence. This is not a new issue, there have always been some tension between advocacy and campaigner organisations, and trade unions, when these NGO’s have been tempted to take on union roles without being accountable to the workers.

There may be domestic reasons for referring to the U.S. Government, and of course it would be very positive if the Obama administration could give active and effective support for improving the factory fire safety situation in these and other countries.

We have good experiences of this from the time when President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor Robert Reich committed the United States Government to helping end child labour in the production of footballs – soccer balls – in Pakistan’s Sialkot. Here it was UNI Global Union who asked for support, preparing for negotiations with the International Football Federation FIFA.

But still, suppliers and their management are the ones who need to make the concrete changes, and usually also change their approach to their workers. Without clear messages and often even pressure from the brands and retailers who buy and bring their products to the markets this will not happen.

Maybe the author is also unaware that brands and retailers are indeed cooperating when it comes to social supply chain conditions. This was among the main reasons for creating the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP, and we also see it in the preparations for coordinated activities to address these fire safety issues.

Corporate social responsibility schemes and initiatives can never be a substitute for constructive and fair labour relations between employers and workers and their trade unions. Social audits can never play the role of freely negotiated collective agreements and supportive labour legislation, and proper government oversight. In fact, schemes and initiatives should even stronger than now encourage and promote the development of these internationally agreed ways of protecting workers human, economic and social rights.

There are important parts of the world where the employers and workers, for various reasons, have not been able to get together on these issues. Outside involvement – including a strong engagement of buying brands and retailers through their social responsibility approaches – continues to be needed.

Both global and national trade unions could make much more active use of the declared commitment of leading brands and retailers to require their suppliers to respect freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. After all, these commitments are a result of a longstanding and continuing engagement by trade unionists in developing these codes, standards and activities.

Telling the global buyers that they are not serious and may as well forget codes, initiatives and capacity building activities among their suppliers would be irresponsible. I am sure that at the end of the day, only a small minority of the people engaged in campagn organisations would take this approach. That US-based SAI and its SA8000 Standard are now singled out also by some who continue their engamenet with often less stringent and more business dominated initiatives is surely related to domestic labour relations issues and not so much part of a broader campaign against CSR.

In a world where governments were unable to introduce even a modest social dimension into their world trade agreements it would be mistaken to think that they can now take over the responsibility. They can and even should increase their engagement, also to set a level playing field for business that requires and also allows for responsible behaviour, but voluntary activities will still remain the key element.

Cooperation is indeed necessary to achieve real change for the better. Business must accept to engage with trade unions and social campaigners, and these need to accept a pragmatic cooperation with business even when the situation at home may be difficult or hostile. To make disadvantaged supply chain workers and their families suffer from adversarial labour relations in developed countries is not acceptable.

Coming from the trade union movement myself, I cannot see any logic or benefit in rejecting voluntary commitments by global brands and retailers to contribute to the respect for  human rights and decent working conditions in supplier workplaces. Correctly applied this would even help union organising efforts. In developed economies where trade unions are sufficiently strong and well established and where tripartite cooperation brings together governments and social partners, this business driven approach to labour relations is of course not needed and should not be applied.

It does not take long to see that an important aim of the CCC publication is to solicit participation and and funding for their 2011  fire safety project. This initiative which also ILRF and some other North American campaigners are part of and that some key Global Union Federations are supporting has failed to attract enough commitments from buying companies. Only German retailer Tchibo and US garment group PVH have signed the project agreement with these campaigners.

I would hope that some additional buying companies could find it possible to back up the campaigner driven Bangladesh fire safety project, to ensure a broad stakeholder participation and to lay the ground for a constructive cooperation and united front of the global community. It would not be good to allow a competitive situation emerge on the ground.

I cannot see any major differences between the 2011 project developed by social campaigners and the work programme that should soon emerge from the cooperation between buyer brands and retailers. If everyone would take a pragmatic approach to these challenges and lay aside ideological motives or possible second agendas, a broad cooperation should be easy to achieve.

I hope that IndustriALL, the Global Union Federation which represents the workers directly concerned, and which has stepped in forcefully on their behalf, can play a convening role in bringing about this joint action.

After the two devastating garment factory fires in Pakistan and Bangladesh it is clear that much of the immediate focus will be on worker safety, without losing sight of the need for other improvements as well. Many buyers themselves as well as social responsibility initiatives such as WRAP, SAI and BSCI have already stepped up their existing awareness and capacity building activities. Companies such as French Carrefour and Swedish H&M have been among those who have already done much concrete work in this field and whose experiences will surely be very useful to draw on.

Structural changes and improvements must follow as soon as possible to make the physical conditions at workplaces safe. This is one of the most important tasks for the buying brands and retailers that are already working together with GIZ, the German Development Angency, to develop concrete action.

The Clean Clothes Campaign and other involved campaigners should seriously consider whether it would not be useful to work together with buying brands and retailers and seek cooperation rather than conflict. The challenges in Bangladesh and Pakistan are of such a magnitude that only a tripartite cooperation in the countries themselves with concrete and broad support from the outside can make a real difference.

Finally – let us not forget that the national partners in Pakistan and Bangladesh – governments, suppliers, unions and other stakeholders – need to play a leading role in all of this. In Bangladesh, a tripartite cooperation has already been set up. This has to be possible also on the international level.

Julkaistu

Brands and retailers should now disclose concrete measures for Bangladesh and Pakistan fire safety and respond positively to IndustriALL cooperation invite

Where are the real, concrete and visible commitments from brands and retailers to help deal with the factory fire safety problems in Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries? Promises and declarations have been heard, but we are well into 2013 and now is the time for more concrete information.

A company that has shown how one can move fast also on big issues is world’s largest retailer Wal-Mart. It did not take long for them to change their own supply chain conditions, tightening up controls. Also other steps were announced, including support for factories that need to make changes in their fire safety setup. The rapid reaction raises expectations that we will soon see action on the ground.

To be fair, also some others have told the public on what they have been doing and intend to continue with. These include GAP, unfairly and incorrectly in the teeth of US activists because they have gone their own way instead of giving support to the campaigners and their project. H&M and Carrefour have already done much, training management and workers in hundreds of factories. Inditex is now joining IndustriALL in project cooperation.

Perhaps interestingly, when I was Head of UNI Commerce I did negotiate Global Framework Agreements with all three companies – H&M, Carrefour and Inditex, and have good experiences of the social dialogue and cooperation with all of them.

Of course, we need to see much more than training and awareness raising. Physical factory conditions will need to be considerably improved. There will be big implications all the way up to buying conditions and supply arrangements.

Others have been more quiet about their activities, plans and commitments, to say it mildly.

Still, there is much going on, particularly in the fields of training and awareness raising. Craig Moss of Social Fingerprint just came back from a session in Bangladesh, and we see how WRAP and others have been active as well. But where are the brands and retailers themselves, when it comes to telling about the support for the garment industry in problem countries to ensure wokplace safety?

A particular problem is Pakistan. We cannot allow that the country’s difficult security situation leads to less attention being paid to worker safety and other conditions at supplier sites. Although reliable social audits and certifications may be impossible to continue, solutions have to be found that guarantee decent conditions for working people.

Spain’s Inditex – mother company of Zara and other clothing brands – has joined the garment workers in IndustriALL Global Union in an effort to bring about positive change in Bangladesh. This is a welcome move by a responsible retailer, but we need fast follow up also from others.

When I took the initiative last autumn in both Social Accountability International SAI and the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP to launch action in Pakistan and Bangladesh, an important objective was to build a large coalition where everyone can participate, both business and stakeholders. IndustriALL’s recent announcement shows a similar aim. This global union’s resolve to lift up also other sub-standard working conditions to levels of human decency should stop nobody from supporting and joining.

I know that many brands and retailers – and CSR schemes and initiatives – are discussing and planning concrete activities right now. It should not be difficult to combine these plans with the IndustriALL approach. Fast action is now needed.

I would like to see talks between these leading and responsible brands and retailers, and IndustriALL, to help find a common effective approach. This large global union federation reaches out in a constructive way and business must respond positively. Other conflicts of interest, which surely will continue, cannot be allowed to hinder strong common measures for the human rights of these vulnerable supply chain workers.

The public needs to know how the international business community and its stakeholders are standing up to their promises. I have worked since many years with large brands and retailers, and often been frustrated by what seems to be almost an obsession by many of them to avoid any kind of publicity.

Social media has changed the world of information and the old approach to be quiet and hope that things go away does not work anymore. If nothing else, companies should look at Wal-Mart’s fast reaction as a good example on how to make sure that information gets out and becomes part of the discussion that goes on.

If also European brands and retailers had been more active and alert, and read the situation correctly, parts of the European Parliament Resolution on Bangladesh Fire Safety could have looked different. Just to mention one example.

The brands and retailers and those who coordinate these fire safety programmes for them have to get their information activities in order. To keep the public informed is an important part of the job. Until now, they are underperforming.

The buying public has the right to know what is being done to help avoid disasters such as those that cost the lives of hundreds of Pakistani and Bangladeshi workers under appalling circumstances.