The scale of our member companies' influence over working conditions is growing every year This year the number of workers reached through ETI member companies' ethical trade activities rose from 9.4 million last year to 9.8 million.
ETI members: £125 billion+ turnover 631 staff dedicated to ethical trade £15.9 million dedicated expenditure on ethical trade 9.8 million workers reached by member companies' ethical trade activities 133,075 actions agreed by members' suppliers to improve workers' conditions Marks & Spencer has introduced a range of initiatives designed to build supplier support for ethical trade, including conferences and other events, a dedicated website and awareness-raising DVDs. 
Productivity and wages rise at Echo Sourcing's factory, with New Look's support.
Collaboration between UK fashion retailer New Look and one of its Bangladeshi garment suppliers on an initiative to raise wages and lower working hours is starting to bring benefits for more than 2,000 workers: in the first year, the wages of the lowest grade of workers increased by 24 percent, while overtime rates dropped by 46 percent. 
Leading UK hard landscaping company Marshalls is taking steps to tackle endemic exploitation and child labour in Indian sandstone production. Every year, around 250,000 tonnes of sandstone are shipped from Rajasthan in northern India to the UK, ending up in our driveways, patios and pavements. A new alliance between Zara's owners Inditex and the global garments union is helping the Spanish retailer develop a strategic approach to tackling workers' rights throughout its supply chain, and to respond swiftly and effectively to major breaches of workers' rights when they occur. Workers in one Cambodian garment factory have already benefited. Typhoo's strategy of combining advice on improving workers' conditions with commercial skill-transfer has transformed a Malawian tea supplier's initial uncertainty about ethical trade into a firm commitment to providing decent conditions for its workers. Fashion retailer New Look is building buy-in and support for ethical trade across its business by creating a team of ethical champions. They have been pioneering new approaches to integrating ethical trade into their buying practices and supplier relationships. 
This step-by-step guide to purchasing practices provides a framework for action for companies to promote better labour standards within their supply chains. It outlines the methods that have been developed and used by members of the ETI Purchasing Practices Project to review their purchasing practices from an ethical trade perspective. Available to ETI members only 
Suppliers have a key role and responsibility for providing good working conditions for the people they employ. But their efforts can sometimes be undermined by the buying practices of their customers - often the same retailers who are pushing them to comply with their codes of labour practice. |
The Body Shop's gift team has discovered that by keeping the construction of its gift containers constant and changing only their colour and design it could continue to purchase 80% of its entire gift offer from the same suppliers, with only 20% seasonal churn. This has allowed the company to engage much more extensively with those suppliers on ethical trade, and to help them get to the root causes of recurring workers' issues.
ASDA is taking a series of practical steps to integrate ethical considerations into its buying decisions, combining training with new incentives for buyers. A key challenge for ethical trade is how companies can enable workers in their supply chains to access effective means of redress. John Ruggie recognised this in his landmark report to the United Nations Human Rights Commission in 2009. The report acknowledged the importance of giving workers' access to grievance procedures, the barriers to judicial mechanisms and the failings of most company-level mechanisms.
It also set out a set of principles that non-judicial, company-level grievance mechanisms should follow. Tesco was one of four companies - and the only retailer - that volunteered to pilot the principles in its South African supplier farms. Winning suppliers’ hearts and minds: Next plc's ethical trade team is supplementing a series of awareness-raising conferences for suppliers and buyers with on-going practical advice and support on ethical trading. Three years ago, Gap Inc. embarked on a major programme of work to encourage its suppliers to engage with trade unions, so that workers' issues can be resolved swiftly and effectively. 
How can a business survive within a community ravaged by HIV/AIDS? Westfalia Ltd in Limpopo, South Africa, is not just surviving, but thriving...
"When someone dies after working in your company for many years, you can't just give their replacement a bit of training and expect them to immediately do the same job. It takes years to get them up to the same level, and sometimes you never really manage it."
Dorcus Molomo is Human Resources Manager at Westfalia Ltd, a large farm which exports avocados and citrus fruits to European supermarkets, with ETI member company Greencell its UK distributor. 
What should companies be doing to improve their approach to ethical trading and what are the effective strategies that retailers can adopt? 
"It's not us knocking on their door anymore, it's them knocking on our door asking for help" 
Our half-day ethical trade training course for buying staff is designed to help companies drive ethical trade to the heart of the way they do business. |
