Two more clothing companies – Phillips-Van Heusen and Eddie Bauer – have become members of the US-based Fair Labor Association’s monitoring programme.
Businesses that become members of the programme make a commitment to implement the association’s workplace code of conduct, which prohibits child labour, enforces health and safety standards and the right to collective bargaining, and establishes rules for hours of work and overtime pay.
Nine US clothing and footwear companies using more than 2350 factories in 75 countries have now signed up to the programme.
The FLA is an umbrella organization linking companies with human rights groups, religious institutions and universities to try to improve working conditions in factories around the world.
FLA members also commit themselves to internal and external monitoring, to remedy code violations and to publish public reports on their performance against the code.
Phillips-Van Heusen is one of the biggest clothing retailers in the world, and had a turnover of $1.5billion (£1bn) last year. Eddie Bauer runs 570 stores worldwide, and also has a mail-order catalogue business.