The food retailer Coop Italia received the Humane Workplace Award at this year’s Corporate Conscience Awards for its work to improve conditions for workers in its supply chain.
The company, which is the largest grocery retailer in Italy, now includes clauses on work conditions and child labour in all its contracts and has begun monitoring workplace conditions in 300 of its 2500 suppliers. It intends to expand monitoring to cover all suppliers in due course.
Judges for the awards said they were particularly impressed by Coop Italia’s commitment to providing ‘intensive training’ for suppliers that did not meet the company’s standards, rather than just ending their contracts.
The award was presented by the US-based Center for Responsibility in Business. Other awards and winning companies were:
Diversity Award: Fannie Mae for its commitment to employment opportunities for women and minorities, including mentoring and networking programmes and diversity training. SBC Communications for its ‘remarkable record of diversity in the workplace and marketplace’ which led last year to $3.4billion (£2.4bn) worth of supply contracts placed with businesses owned by women, ethnic minorities and disabled people.
Community Partnership Award: Wainwright Bank & Trust for $140bn in loan commitments to non-profit organizations over the past ten years.
The Corporate Conscience Awards were established in 1987 by the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP).
CEP recently changed its name to the Center for Responsibility in Business ‘to better reflect both our roots and our mission as an organization’.