Multinational companies: problem
or solution?
The
role of brands and retailers in improving working
conditions
Check your favorite brand now!
More information on the ethical policies of more than 50 European brands and retailers can be found at www.fashioncheck.net
This website is designed to inform consumers about the policies and practices of garment and sportswear companies and about the conditions in which their goods are manufactured. and provides ideas for action to help improve working conditions in the garment industry.
"Alternative" or
"Ethical" Clothes
A number of initiatives selling clothes that are
calling themselves "ethical", "alternative"
or "fairly produced" have sprung up following
campaigns by the international anti-sweatshop movement
and increased consumer interest in fair trade and
ethical shopping. These initiatives aim to promote
the idea of a more ethical clothing industry and/or
meet the demands of a rising number of individual
and institutional consumers for "clean clothes".
Read
more >>
Aldi's clothing bargains -discount
buys discounting standards? Working conditions
in Aldi's suppliers in China and Indonesia: Suggestions
for consumer and trade union action, August 2007
Read
more >>
REPORT - The Story of Toys
Made in China for Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart squeeze pushes Chinese toy factories to
lie and cheat Chinese Workers suffer intense labor
pains calling on human dignity
Read more
>>
PUBLICATION - Who pays for
cheap clothes?
5 questions the low-cost retailers must answer
The four companies this report focusses on, Asda,
Tesco, Primark and Matalan, are to fashion what
McDonalds and Burger King are to food: mass produced,
hassle-free, fast, popular, and reliant on exploitation
down the supply chain to keep things that way. It
asks what impact this trend is having on workers'
rights, and challenges these retailers to ensure
that workers are not paying for our cheap clothes
with their human rights.
Download
the report here >>
This section contains information
and analysis on specific companies, as well as some
more general resources about the garment and sportswear
sectors as a whole, the role of companies, and how
to campaign on them. Information on specific companies
is set out in the individual profiles on this page,
and below we point you to more general information.
Over a decade of campaigning has seen most clothing
companies move from outright denial to accepting
some responsibility for working conditions. Many
have impressive-looking codes
of conduct, expansive CSR sections of their
websites, release annual "social" reports
and have whole departments working on ethical
trading.
Yet the reality for millions of workers round
the world remains one of exhausting work in poor
conditions, regularly working late into the night
to earn poverty wages, and with no trade union
representation. The CCC still receives frequent
urgent appeals regarding
particularly severe abuses of workers' rights
in the supply chains of major brands. And all
major companies sit somewhere on a line between
stubborn refusal to act and snail's pace progress.
CCC calls on companies to do the following:
- Accept their responsibility for the conditions
in which their products are made.
- Adopt a code of
conduct that sets out workers' basic rights,
and defend these rights by joining a trade union.
- Prove that the code is being implemented
using credible, independent verification.
- Work with suppliers where working conditions
aren't up to scratch, rather than pulling out
of them.
- Work with trade unions and labour rights
groups to achieve all this, through multi-stakeholder
initiatives.
- Make sure that their purchasing
practices don't get in the way of attempts
to guarantee workers' rights.
