Social Compliance a Costly Cosmetic Exercise, Says Global Union Federation
15/5/2006
Press department
INTERNATIONAL TEXTILE, GARMENT AND LEATHER WORKERS’ FEDERATION
Embargoed: For use after 10:00 am on May 16 2006
Social Compliance a Costly Cosmetic Exercise, Says Global Union Federation
Garment workers around the world are worse off than they were a decade ago with ten years of intense activity in the name of corporate social responsibility having brought about little real improvement in workplace conditions, Neil Kearney, General Secretary of the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation told the Association of Suppliers to the British Clothing Industry's Annual Industry Conference in Hinckley on Tuesday.
Mr. Kearney said that great reliance has been placed on the social auditing profession, but that intermittent visits from under-qualified auditors are not capable of bringing about real progress.
"If anything conditions have worsened in the past ten years, most noticeably since the advent of trade liberalisation in textiles and clothing with the ending of the Multi-Fibre Arrangement at the beginning of 2005", said Mr. Kearney. "Everywhere the story is similar: Long hours of work, low wages, workers cheated of benefits and denied fundamental rights. The buyers, the brands and the retailers cannot continue to put all the blame for this situation on the suppliers.
"Too many of the brands and retailers are suffering from a split personality, on the one hand they claim they want their code of conduct respected, on the other they engage in purchasing practices which make this impossible, paying pitiful prices and demanding unrealistic delivery schedules.
"Buyers are rewarded for squeezing every extra penny out of the supplier rather than on the social compliance of the supplier concerned.
"Compliance mechanisms are failing. In the main, the auditors are poorly trained, inadequately prepared for individual audits and rush through factories while working by rote from checklists.
"Auditors recently gave a clean bill of health to a Cambodian factory engaged in a major conflict with its unionised workforce. Union leaders had been dismissed, legal action was pending but the auditors were either blind or deliberately ignored all this.
"Auditors described as 'a good factory' Spectrum Garments in Bangladesh which collapsed killing 64 workers and which had been breaking every law in the book.
"Auditors regularly certify Chinese factories where research has shown that 9 out of 10 are not in compliance even with China's own labour code. The same research suggests that 7 out of 8 such factories falsify their records but generally auditors appear to ignore this.
"While conditions worsen the trend is towards shorter audits. Almost unbelievably European retailers are now suggesting that a half day audit is sufficient. How soon before we see blind folded auditors on skates?
"Brands and retailers need to stop the hand-wringing and adopt a straightforward approach. They must demand that their suppliers pay a living wage for a standard working week which does not exceed 48 hours and that they respect the right to organise and bargain collectively.
Mr. Kearney said that the current practices of ensuring compliance are not sustainable, and that brands and retailers could save a fortune on social auditing by putting the emphasis on the right to organise and to bargain instead.
"A mature system of industrial relations which hands ownership of the employment relationship to managers and workers is the only real way forward", said Mr. Kearney
Concluded Mr. Kearney: "Brands and retailers today have a choice, it is a choice between RP and PR - real pressure on suppliers rather than public relations in the market place".
The full text of Neil Kearney’s speech is available at http://www.itglwf.org/displaydocument.asp?DocType=Speech&Index=1564&Language=EN
-end-
The International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation is a global union federation bringing together 220 affiliated organisations in 110 countries with a combined membership of 10 million workers.
For more information, contact:
Neil Kearney (General Secretary) at 32/475932487 (mobile) or nkearney@itglwf.org
ITGLWF Secretariat at tel: 32/02/512.26.06, fax: 32/02/512.09.04 or office@itglwf.org
Visit our website at www.itglwf.org