It’s been a while…

But don’t worry we have been very busy! Not least with delivering babies, doing countless ethical audits across the world, and learning something about the way consumers think about ethical trade. 

A consumer survey was published last week which found that many consumers do not believe fashion retailers’ claims on ethical sourcing. It also stated that the most important issue to consumers was whether or not there were underage or child workers making the products that they were buying. 

The study, published by TNS Worldpanel Fashion, asked 7,000 people about the ethical credentials claimed by UK retailers. 45% said that they were sceptical. It suggested that older buyers (over 55) were more interested in ethical claims than those under the age of 25.

Our own experience shows that customers are pleasantly surprised to hear how much work certain fashion retailers are doing on ethics. More people are checking the labels for information. More people are becoming more discriminating in which claims they choose to believe.

Here at Impactt we welcome increased consumer interest. We welcome the exposes and the media coverage, but it would be great if retailers, brands, NGOs, unions and journalists could report more credible good news stories to customers – more stories to show that by working hard on these issues we can all make a difference to the lives of the people making the stuff we buy.

1000 children aged 8-13 years old working in brick kilns in Shanxi

Our China team just sent over this terrible story from the Chinese papers. Be warned its not for the faint hearted…

Following the news stories on the Olympics firm accused of using child labor, the Chinese papers have reported  that at least 1000 trafficked children  were found working in brick-making factories in Shanxi. The youngest children were only 8 years old,  the oldest only 13.  The children were locked up after working all day until 10 at night. They did not have water for showers, many had skin diseases.  Many were reported to have been severely beaten by the supervisors, some to the point where they had limbs broken, others had been beaten up with hot pods for churning bricks until their backs were burnt deeply. 

 

About 400 parents have signed a petition letter on the internet desperate to seek help. The local media have reported that some parents rescued 40 children, but found that some local police deterred parents from rescuing other children, warning them ‘not to interfere with children of others’ while leaving the children working in the factories.  Local police have been accused of being involved in trafficking the children among different brick factories in the region.  Other local police were accused of putting money for financing the rescue action into their own pockets. 

This sheds light on how deep corruption in the Shanxi area goes.  

Ambitious new Nike Corporate Responsibility Report

 Nike has in the past few days (May 31, 2007) released their Corporate Responsibility report. The section dealing with ‘Workers in Contract factories’ makes interesting reading. It starts by acknowledging that the 800,000 workers in their supply chain overshadow any other direct constituency; that 80% of these workers are women aged between 18 and 24 and  they are themselves significant agents of change for their wider communities.Nike has set themselves some very ambitious targets. They state they want to bring systemic change for workers’ rights in their supply chain and in the industry at large. In particular, by 2011 they intend to:

• Eliminate excessive overtime in their contract factories
• Implement tailored human resource management systems and educational training for workers in their focus factories
• Implement Freedom of Association Educational programmes in 100 percent of focus factories
• And lead multi-brand collaboration on compliance issues in 30 percent of their supply chain

Nike describe how their programme has gone through three iterations. Generation I and II were about standards and monitoring, Generation III they argue is about ‘responsible competitiveness’, identifying and remediating root causes with systemic approaches.  Specifically it focuses on:

• Building excellence in factory remediation
• Developing sustainable sourcing strategies
• Building business integration and accountability
• Increasing contract factory ownership of corporate responsibility
• Building industry coalitions

Nike used to be synonymous with sweatshops. They are now, along with the GAP, widely acknowledged within the ethical trade community as having the leading and most well resourced ethical trading programmes of all companies. That’s not to say they haven’t got problems. No companies can guarantee that their supply chains are problem free. After all this is about human relationships and about 800,000 young women in very poor countries. 

Nike argues that most people in ethical trade have become experts in rooting out the bad, but the real challenge is in outlining and delivering a vision of success.

One could quibble about whether all ethical traders are finding the problems in their supply chains, however Nike are right about the need for successful visions. Nike should be applauded for setting themselves such ambitious goals. But the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.

Chinese Workers Paid With Fake Cash

There was a burst of incredulous laughter from one side of the Impactt office this afternoon, as this news piece dropped into our inboxes, signalling a new low for labour standards in China. 

The article, posted on ChinaCSR.com, reports that 20 workers at an unnamed jeans-dyeing factory in Guangdong were paid in fake bank notes. When the workers asked the factory to exchange the fake notes for real ones, they were dismissed. 

The factory reportedly claimed that they were victims of the forgery as well, and that they would pay the workers in real currency when they had resolved the issue with their bank. But this does not explain the dismissal of the workers, and goes against the additonal reports that the factory ‘usually uses the fake notes only for new workers’.  

The story is in fact not remotely funny.

We have spent the past 30 minutes discussing what we should say on this matter, and how we as a company should react to the news. What we all agree on is that this is a form of forgery that goes well beyond the common practice of faking books to show that workers have been paid the correct amount of real currency. 

Abuse of workers packing fair trade bananas in the UK, on Today programme this morning

There was a flutter of intrigue in the Impactt office this morning over the allegations made in the Today programme expose of labour conditions at a fair-trade banana supplier. The investigation alleged that Polish migrant workers in Luton, packing bananas for Tesco and Waitrose, were working excessive hours and had no breaks. Supervisors were recorded shouting and bullying the workers. During the investigation a pregnant women had a miscarriage after the management failed to allocate her lighter duties. What made this story particularly piquant was the fact the plant was packing fair-trade bananas!

More on the Today Website.

This raises some interesting points about the relationship between fair-trade and ethical trade. Impactt have been concerned for some time that whilst fair-trade guarantee a better price for farmers, it does not necessarily mean labour conditions through out the supply chain are upheld.

The packing plant may have been considered low risk by retailers – it was UK-based and supplying fair-trade, however this is no guarantee that labour standards will be ok. The UK like many other countries is a destination for migrant workers. And as Impactt’s experience the temporary labour working group demonstrated, migrant workers are vulnerable to abuse as they are completely dependent on one employer: the farm or labour provider that hired them.

Retailers and fair-trade organisations need to be aware of the issues relating to labour standards as well as the issues relating to terms of trade. Whilst these are certainly connected one does not guarantee the other.