Avainsana: BSCI

Julkaistu

Governments, business and stakeholders need to work together for supply chain sustainability

Supply chain social responsibility is on the move this spring. The tripartite ILO International Labour Conference will be a high point with governments, employers and trade unions debating how best to secure human rights and promote decent work. Countries around the world are following up on the UN Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights, setting their own National Action Plans. Many sustainability schemes and initiatives are developing and stepping up their own work. The professional social auditors have established their own organisation APSCA to secure and develop audit quality.

It is important to ensure that the activities and programmes are efficient and help bring about positive change. The attention to policy and structures should not move away the focus from real and concrete efforts to improve labour conditions. Taking care of the tools and using them effectively should complement each other, not compete about our attention.

We need broad engagement for sustainable supply chains

Public-private cooperation is an important element of any effective sustainability efforts, also in consumer countries that work on their own social and environmental responsibilities in global supply chains.

Governments need to influence supplier countries to play an active role in ensuring human rights and decent working conditions. They must also set rules for buyer companies and other supply chain participants to follow. Bringing together business and stakeholders around joint objectives and tasks, such as Germany is doing in its textile alliance – – Bündnis für nachhaltige Textilien – is equally essential.

Buyer brands and retailers can and must use their commercial power and know-how to require and help their business partners to behave responsibly. Carefully designed buying practices and agreements can both encourage and enable this.

Trade unions and non-governmental organisations are important partners in this work, enabling and helping workers to participate in setting labour conditions.

GSCP has created a solid base for convergence and cooperation

The Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP has done much to help brands and retailers translate their sustainability commitments to concrete action. The GSCP Reference Code and a collection of sustainability tools now form a solid base for effective sustainability engagement. They were all created through a multi-stakeholder process and aim at securing full respect for universal human rights. Furthermore, they set minimum requirements for decent working and employment conditions, based on ILO International Labour Conventions. Key toolbox elements deal with sustainability management systems, both for suppliers and for buyer companies. Others cover all aspects of social auditing and auditor competence, setting minimum standards that should ensure reliable audits.

GSCP was created to drive an upward convergence of social responsibility codes and standards, based on the ambitious reference code and the application guidelines in the toolbox. This would enable mutual recognition of social audit results and help direct more resources to capacity building and remediation at supplier workplaces. The GSCP equivalence process was developed for the analysis and benchmarking that serves this process.

This important initiative by many of the world’s largest brands and retailers has had a much broader impact than only driving its core convergence objective. We have seen a remarkable growth of both awareness and engagement in the business community with activities levels stepped up across many industries. A good and welcome example is the commitment made by the Consumer Goods Forum CGF to play an active role in working for the UN Sustainable Development Goals SDG’s.

The first concrete joint measure by the CGF companies will be launching of an ambitious and welcome project to eliminate forced labour from their supply chains. This will also be reflected in the work of GSCP now that the Reference Code, toolbox and equivalence process are in place. This does not mean that other parts of the Code would be neglected, they will continue to be as important as ever on the agendas and programmes of the individual brands and retailers.

Sustainability schemes and initiatives update their own approaches

Buyers need to be actively engaged if we really want to secure human rights and decent working conditions in global supply chains. Corporate social responsibility CSR schemes and initiatives can contribute to the quality and efficiency of this engagement. To achieve this, both transparency and full civil society engagement are needed.

There have been big changes and efficiency boosts also on the standard and code application side. As an example, Social Accountability Accreditation Services SAAS has further increased the reliability of the already demanding SA8000 Social Standard. The sustainability auditing industry itself has established a new organisation to safeguard audit quality and reliability. The Association for Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) is an important initiative and I was happy to accept an invitation to join their Stakeholder Board.

Also other sustainability programmes such as Social Accountability International SAI and the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI have updated their codes or standards. They have continued to add more emphasis on remediation and capacity building and have developed new innovative approaches for this. Others, such as the Better Cotton Initiative BCI and the Global Organic Textile Standard GOTS are also working on code and standard revisions and the Fairtrade movement has just released a new textile standard.

Improvements in conditions are the test for schemes and initiatives

To improve the instruments is of course not enough. Supply chain workers are still too often working under sub-standard conditions and paid far below what is needed for a decent life. Voices that reject voluntary business initiatives and call for far reaching legislation instead will grow stronger unless concrete and significant improvements at supplier workplaces are made at a faster pace.

There is today a genuine disappointment over the slowness or lack of visible improvements in labour and social conditions in global supply chains. These sentiments go also beyond the many advocacy organisations and trade unions that are actively voicing their frustrations.

The best way for the business community to respond is to step up their contributions to bring about real improvements of human rights and labour conditions in the supply chain. The new Consumer Goods Forum CGF forced labour initiative is a good example of this and can lead to substantial positive change. This is a sign of success also for the patient work done by GSCP, to build awareness and drive convergence in the sustainability work of global buyers. The challenge is now to use the significant commercial power of these world class companies to translate this commitment into real action. GSCP will have an important role in making this possible, as will also cooperating sustainability schemes and initiatives.

Sustainability initiatives and mainstream labour relations can complement each other

The best approach to improve labour conditions includes organised social partners, effectively applied labour legislation, collective agreements and an efficient labour inspection system. As this is still a distant dream in large parts of the world also other approaches are needed. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is a manifestation of this.

Voluntary schemes and initiatives are there also to help buying brands and retailers respect their obligations. The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights could hardly be applied without these business-driven or multi-stakeholder programmes which build on social auditing and focus on remediation and capacity building.

We should remember that all leading schemes demand full respect for freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining. Also unions and advocacy organisations could and should use this for supporting organising efforts.

Colder labour relations climate hurts supply chain cooperation

Buying brands and retailers are targeted also without valid reasons and the CSR concept itself is put in question. Often this relates to anti-globalisation drives and is more general and political than referring to concrete supply chain issues. It does also reflect an overall polarisation of opinions and a deterioration of labour relations where social partnership gives way for the struggle over dwindling resources.

Recession pitches business and unions against each other. Having negotiated how the fruits of growth are shared, capital and labour are now engaged in a combat over who shoulders losses. High unemployment and deteriorating social services add to conflicts. Unions are pushed into defence by business circles and their political supporters who want to get rid of collective agreements and legal regulations that are seen as restrictive.

Supply chain sustainability cooperation is clearly affected by this lack of confidence.

Conflicts at home is not an excuse to forget joint obligations

The commercial workers’ trade unions engaged themselves for improving supply chain conditions during the time that I was in charge of UNI Commerce Global Union. We joined the advisory and stakeholder boards of initiatives such as Social Accountability International SAI, the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI and the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP.

These decisions were not made without thorough considerations. Many of the large retailers that we came to work with were formidable opponents in their own employer roles. What made us sign up to these initiatives was the conviction that our own conflicts should not be played out at the expense of the already hard pressed and badly treated supply chain workers and their families.

This was a very mature and responsible stance by the large commerce trade unions around the world that were our members. Something of the same spirit would be needed also today. This would require also many buyer brands and retailers to take a more positive stance to involving workers and their unions in supply chain sustainability work.

Julkaistu

Governments step up supply chain involvement – business and civil society need to work together

Germany-G7

Germany has placed supply chain sustainability high on the agenda of the G7 Group of leading advanced economies. At a stakeholder conference in March in Berlin, the German Presidency announced its intentions to work for a common approach social and environmental standards. Some leading brands and retailers who form a critical mass of global buyers have sent signals that they are prepared to play an active role. This could well be through GSCP, which can make its Reference Code and other tools available.

Seeing a clear engagement of global brands and retailers to improve supply chain conditions makes me optimistic. Last week’s members meeting of the Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP in Los Angeles confirmed this commitment.  And no, it is not really a result of anyone ‘putting pressure on’ or ‘forcing’ them, or any other adverse campaigning and publicity.

The UN Principles for Business and Human Rights – the Ruggie principles – and their follow up both by the public and private sector are of course important. International buyers understand the need for due diligence when managing supply chains, be it about their own work or that of their suppliers and contractors. Universal human rights conventions and international labour norms create a solid basis for this.

This task is not new for most large brands and retailers. They have their own sustainability personnel and are active on the ground, working with their supplier factories and farms. Smaller companies go even further than most, like Swiss apparel retailer Switcher and German Hess Textiles. Both have a hands on approach to ensure social and environmental compliance in the supply chains.

Corporate social responsibility initiatives such as Social Accountability International (SA8000), the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI, the Ethical Trading Initiative ETI and the Fair Labor Association FLA have been working for decades to support and promote human rights and decent working conditions in global supply chains. The Fairtrade movement has long traditions as well, as does the Fair Wear Foundation FWF, to mention two others.

These are just some of the many initiatives that contribute to better supply chain conditions, some on a multi-stakeholder basis and some business driven with a civil society contribution. More important than their structures are the code framework withing which they operate, and their concrete support for remediation and capacity building. Of course there are problems, even failures at times, and these schemes cannot cover all needs.

On the environmental side we have a similar situation with dedicated initiatives like the Global Organic Textile Standard GOTS and the Rainforest Alliance – and many others – certifying compliance, informing consumers and supporting companies and supply chain workers.

Better and mutually recognised social auditing
liberates resources for training and remediation

Much is now happening on the social responsibility agenda. The factory catastrophes in Asia exposed limitations and also shortcomings, and led to tighter auditing rules and other improvements. Capacity building and remediation at workplaces is being stepped up. Harmonisation and convergence of codes and standards through GSCP and its Equivalence Process enable mutual recognition of audit results and liberate resources for real positive change.

The social auditing industry itself has been an active partner in these developments. Two years ago at a GSCP conference in San Francisco, I stressed the need for these companies to get organised and establish their own ethical guidelines. This is now happening and the social auditing industry has created its own association.

There has also been much done by specialised organisations such as the Social Accountability Accreditation Services SAAS. SAI has linked SA8000 certification and social auditing to supplier self assessment and remediation, through its innovative Social Fingerprint approach. BSCI – which has the by far largest membership of all schemes – has also tightened up and clarified its auditing rules.

GSCP Supply Chain Conference Shenzhen April 2012

The first years of GSCP were spent on building up a toolkit for applying the principles of the Reference Code. Meetings with buyers and suppliers were an important part of this work. The final tools were then dealt with and agreed by the Executive and the Advisory Board. All tools are freely available. Here, buyers from leading global brands and retailers meet with representatives of both boards in Shenzhen in China in April 2014. This meeting was hosted by Wal-Mart, world’s largest retailer.

The social audit companies themselves work closely with GSCP on minimum auditing standards which create a common base for helping achieve proper conditions, which satisfy the needs of buyer companies, are accepted by civil society, and are supported by the concerned public authorities. A dedicated, efficient and competent social auditing industry needs to play an important and active role in developing the best ways to protect human rights and improve working conditions.

GSCP Reference Code and other Tools
are good basis for G7 supply chain work

All this is now related to important government activity in the consumer regions. The UN Guiding Principles are transposed in national legislation of many countries. Germany, which has this year’s Presidency of the G7 group of major advanced economies, has committed to drive these issues within the common agenda.

At a recent G7 meeting in Berlin, where I had the opportunity to be present as a representative of GOTS, the top directors of OECD, ILO and the World Bank committed their support and pledged cooperative action of their own to help achieve the goals.

GSCP has an important role in channeling a concrete business contribution to the public-private partnership that will be needed to bring about real change and improvements. An initiative of the Consumer Goods Forum CGF, GSCP groups together a critical mass of global buying companies both within and outside this consumer goods industry itself. Its Reference Code as well as the extensive and publicly available toolbox can form both a demanding and realistic base for any standard-setting and implementation.

There are clear signals coming from the Consumer Goods Forum and its member companies that there will be an important upgrading of social and environmental supply chain issues on their agenda. At the same time, there is a solid understanding of the necessity to ensure the acceptance and credibility of this work with civil society.

This underlines the importance of GSCP which is based on always seeking consensus between the business driven Executive Board and the Advisory Board that represents civil society. As an Advisory Board member coming from a trade union background I can vouch for the serious and respectful approach to these principles. Indeed, the boards have never had to vote.

Time to move away from adversarial relations
that make supply chain workers pay for other conflicts

We may see major commitments made and steps taken already this year to tighten up the defence of human rights, improve labour conditions and support environmental sustainability in global supply chains. To ensure that this process will be effective we should move forward from the all too common adversarial attitudes that we have seen when dealing with global supply chains after the fire and building catastrophes of the last years.

The present labour relations climate is of course not particularly favourable for seeking compromises and consensus. Still, it should not be allowed to hinder a constructive cooperation in global supply chain matters.

The GSCP Reference Code as well as leading standards such as the SA8000 provide, when seriously applied, a solid base for a joint approach. They are clear also on common issues of contention between employers and unions in many of the consumer countries. If we are serious about respecting the rights of supply chain workers and improving their social conditions, we should not let these differences reflect on the supply chain cooperation.

Real differences should be approached
through honest and respectful dialogue

There will remain important issues to solve also if we can ensure a positive supply chain cooperation between business, trade unions and engaged non-governmental organisations. We can see this in the living wage discussions, in how to apply freedom of association and the effective right to collective bargaining, in applying working hour rules, and in many other areas. This is normal and acceptable, and the answers should be found through common deliberations, resulting in a clear message from the international community to governments and employers in supplier countries on how worker’s rights and needs have to be protected and promoted as a condition for participating in the global economy.

The common aim must be a situation where employers sit down with workers and their trade unions to freely and respectfully negotiate employment and working conditions, enabled and supported by governments through solid legislation and guarantees for an effective application of what has been agreed. We know that it will take a long time for this to become a reality and that an active involvement of consumer countries – governments, businesses, trade unions and other civil society representatives – will continue to play an important role.

Julkaistu

Corporate social responsibility work – improve rather than dismiss

Sometimes I wonder why so many social campaigners choose to continuously attack the concrete work which is being done through corporate social responsibility schemes and initiatives to improve corporate behaviour in global supply chains. It is as if a business enterprise is bad per definition and incapable of getting things right. The worst of the pack are the large brands and retailers, the exception being those that make special efforts to nurture their relations with the campaigning non-governmental organisations, NGOs.

I am not referring here to concrete criticism, which is both needed and welcome. There is surely room for much improvement, and we have already seen many positive changes after the devastating factory disasters in Bangladesh and Pakistan.

I myself am regularly frustrated over how slowly and poorly code and standard contents are often applied at producer workplaces. Most leading brands and retailers are committed to decent supply chain conditions, but not all do enough for real remediation on the ground. When they do they seldom tell the world about it, information is quite obviously not their best skill.

This is not to say that nothing would be done on the ground. Much is going on to raise awareness and build competence in producer companies and their workplaces. International buyers as well as their corporate social responsibility schemes and initiatives are engaged in this work. Although the important building safety Accord and Alliance in Bangladesh are well funded, active and concrete, they are of course not alone in this field.

Social auditing is the main tool to find out about labour conditions and to identify where improvements are needed. I have much respect for the auditing industry and its auditors who approach their task seriously and skillfully. Not every supplier company is honest and straight-forward, and hiding or falsifying information is a serious problem in some regions. Advanced auditor skills and much experience are needed to see the reality behind these smokescreens.

Surely, there are also less serious auditors out there, and they should be weeded out by the industry itself. We deal with important issues for the workers concerned, and even one rotten egg in the auditor basket can destroy much.

Social auditing and corporate social responsibility CSR schemes and initiatives are a second best solution to supporting human rights and promoting decent work in global supply chains. Social dialogue and collective agreements between well organised workers and employers, supported by solid and actively enforced labour legislation, are of course the best. This is also what CSR work should aim at. But – we need to be realistic, this could still be a very distant goal in many regions and countries.

Social Accountability International SA800, the Ethical Trading Initiative ETI and the Business Social Compliance Initiative BSCI are some of the leading schemes and initiatives. The Global Social Compliance Programme GSCP is a broad business owned organisation with a strong civil society participation which drives upward convergence and mutual recognition between companies and their organisations to combat so-called audit fatigue and release resources to capacity building and remediation at workplaces.

Back to where I started. Having a life-long trade union background, I sometimes quietly shake my head when I see how CSR schemes and initiatives as well as the supply chain sustainability work of brands and retailers is just being summarily opposed instead of making concrete suggestions and demands for changes and improvements. These activities – driven by brands and retailers whether they are business or multi-stakeholder owned – are in many cases the only outside support for supply chain workers.

Yes they are often far from being sufficient and a lot remains to be done but the focus should be on improving rather than dismissing.

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

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.