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Garment factories in Turkey are to be used as a test-bed for developing a common approach to implementing different codes on ethical labour practices.
The factories will participate in trials this year as part of the Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives Project, set up by six organizations that have their own codes but want to reduce confusion. Factory managers often find they have to follow several different codes at the same time. Turkish trade unions and non-governmental organizations will be involved.
The Ethical Trading Initiative, one of the partners, said the idea will be to ‘identify the areas of synergy between our approaches and work together to resolve some of the more complex areas of codes such as how to determine a living wage, how to conduct worker interviews and what are appropriate complaints mechanisms’.
The trials, supported by funding from the European Union and the US State Department, will be overseen by a project manager based at ETI’s London offices. The partners say the trials should lead to implementation guidelines that will simplify compliance for suppliers and so ‘increase the impact of codes on the workers they are supposed to help’. They concede that both retailers and suppliers ‘are increasingly expressing confusion about whose [code] is the best approach’ and that there is ‘a clear need for our organizations to identify how we can best complement each others’ work.’
However, the bodies – the ETI (UK), Social Accountability International, the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium (all US), the Clean Clothes Campaign (Switzerland), and the Fair Wear Foundation (Netherlands) – all stress they do not want to merge or rationalize their codes, only to implement them according to mutually agreed standards.
In a separate move, the ETI has commissioned research to see whether its ethical trading code has improved the lot of workers. The research, being carried out by the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and due to be completed in September, will draw mainly on case studies from South Africa (fruit), Vietnam (garments and footwear) and India (garments).
Eight of the ETI’s 27 members raised standards in their supply chains during 2003, according to the organization’s latest figures, which took into account every company’s ability to detect non-compliance with ETI principles.
Members work with trade unions and non-governmental organizations to raise standards at 17,000 suppliers’ premises.
The ETI said that there had been ‘significant’ improvement overall, although two companies had done less well than in the previous year. The proportion of monitored suppliers reported by members as non-compliant rose in 2003 to 48 per cent, from 32 per cent in 2002.
However, the ETI said this was probably because its members were now better at spotting infringements rather than because working conditions in factories had deteriorated.
Health and safety failings were easily the most common reason why companies failed to comply.
The factories will participate in trials this year as part of the Multi-Stakeholder Initiatives Project, set up by six organizations that have their own codes but want to reduce confusion. Factory managers often find they have to follow several different codes at the same time. Turkish trade unions and non-governmental organizations will be involved.
The Ethical Trading Initiative, one of the partners, said the idea will be to ‘identify the areas of synergy between our approaches and work together to resolve some of the more complex areas of codes such as how to determine a living wage, how to conduct worker interviews and what are appropriate complaints mechanisms’.
The trials, supported by funding from the European Union and the US State Department, will be overseen by a project manager based at ETI’s London offices. The partners say the trials should lead to implementation guidelines that will simplify compliance for suppliers and so ‘increase the impact of codes on the workers they are supposed to help’. They concede that both retailers and suppliers ‘are increasingly expressing confusion about whose [code] is the best approach’ and that there is ‘a clear need for our organizations to identify how we can best complement each others’ work.’
However, the bodies – the ETI (UK), Social Accountability International, the Fair Labor Association and the Worker Rights Consortium (all US), the Clean Clothes Campaign (Switzerland), and the Fair Wear Foundation (Netherlands) – all stress they do not want to merge or rationalize their codes, only to implement them according to mutually agreed standards.
In a separate move, the ETI has commissioned research to see whether its ethical trading code has improved the lot of workers. The research, being carried out by the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and due to be completed in September, will draw mainly on case studies from South Africa (fruit), Vietnam (garments and footwear) and India (garments).
Eight of the ETI’s 27 members raised standards in their supply chains during 2003, according to the organization’s latest figures, which took into account every company’s ability to detect non-compliance with ETI principles.
Members work with trade unions and non-governmental organizations to raise standards at 17,000 suppliers’ premises.
The ETI said that there had been ‘significant’ improvement overall, although two companies had done less well than in the previous year. The proportion of monitored suppliers reported by members as non-compliant rose in 2003 to 48 per cent, from 32 per cent in 2002.
However, the ETI said this was probably because its members were now better at spotting infringements rather than because working conditions in factories had deteriorated.
Health and safety failings were easily the most common reason why companies failed to comply.
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