BT has begun meeting its major suppliers to encourage participation in a supply chain initiative that commits them to meet standards on working conditions, health and safety, and human rights.
The company’s ‘Sourcing with human dignity’ programme is being targeted at around 20 of its largest information technology suppliers. Most of these, such as Alcatel and Fujitsu, are large companies in their own right.
Programmes to raise social and environmental standards within supply chains are common in the retail sector, but this is believed to be a first for telecoms.
BT is holding quarterly supplier forums to explain the aims of the programme and to seek written commitments. It plans to announce how many companies have agreed to take part before April 2002, and to sign up 30 large suppliers by March 2003. It may increase the number of companies involved following a review in 2003.
BT spends £11billion ($16bn) a year with tens of thousands of suppliers.
Although the company eventually wants suppliers to sign contractual agreements relating to the standard, it said the initiative would be ‘a collaborative undertaking that requires the active support of all our suppliers’ rather than one imposed from above.
It added: ‘We will try to win support through a phased approach, but we will also prioritize industry sectors where we believe the risk of falling short of our standards is at its highest.’
BT says it will ‘welcome rather than penalize’ suppliers that identify activities which fall below the standards, but will consider ending business relationships with a supplier ‘where serious shortfalls of the standards persist’.
It will ask suppliers to use ‘reasonable endeavours’ to give workers a way of reporting lapses without fear of reprisals.
BT’s standard, which will be displayed in the workplaces of suppliers and subcontractors, is based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Labour Organization convention. Companies already taking part in a similar ethical trading standard may be exempt from signing up.
Among other things, it says suppliers should not force employees to work in excess of 48 hours per week, that wages should not be paid in kind, and that they should be sufficient to meet ‘basic needs’.
If local laws restrict the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining, it says suppliers should ‘consider developing legal alternative means for independent and free association’.