CCC Reference Guide on Code Implementation & Verification
Section 1: Codes of labour practice

Development of the Model Code

Why does the CCC focus on companies?
The Clean Clothes Campaign believes that retailers and brandname companies are responsible for the working conditions in which their products are made. Nowadays, retailers and brandname companies take some responsibility for the labour conditions in their supply chains - at least on paper. Many have developed codes of conduct - lists of labour standards they say they are meeting in their workplaces.

The reality behind these codes however, is often still quite grim. Wages are too low to live on, 80-hour workweeks are common, and the health and safety of the workers, the majority of whom are women, is constantly being undermined. Workers have no security of employment, women are discriminated against and harassed, sometimes sexually. Workers are often not allowed to form trade unions. Sometimes this is because the right to organize is not recognized in the zone or country where they work. However, more often obstacles are put up specifically to prevent workers from exercising these rights. The same goes for collective bargaining. There are important ways that, as activists and consumers, we can put pressure on companies to make changes.

To read more about what the CCC has found to be successful strategies in pressuring companies to act upon their responsibilities and the major developments within the industry, visit the following website:
http://www.cleanclothes.org/companies.htm.

Also see the following paper: Using Codes of Conduct: Some background for the CCC strategy debate, Newsletter 13, November 2000.

One of the ways CCC uses and criticizes company codes is via its Urgent Appeals system. The CCC urgent appeal Working Group (made up of representatives from all the different European Clean Clothes Campaigns), using specific criteria takes up these requests, verifies them, and adds to the initial information about the case using local contacts in the country where the rights violation has occurred. If the workers decide that a public, international campaign is what they really want, then a wide appeal for action is distributed to the CCC international network via e-mail.
For more information on what CCC urgent appeals are, see:
http://www.cleanclothes.org/urgent/intro.htm. Examples of urgent appeal cases the CCC has worked on publicly in recent years can be found on the following website: http://www.cleanclothes.org/appeals.htm.

When the CCC started one of our main aims was to get international companies to accept responsibilities for labour conditions in global supply chains. In the early years we limited ourselves to action on specific cases and companies. In the middle of the nineties however the need was felt to set out a more systematic and structural approach, which would also force companies to address the forces underlying the violations and to prevent violations from occurring. Jointly with several Asian labour networks and organizations, and with the international trade union federations, the CCC developed a model code, called the "Code of Labour Practices for the Apparel Industry Including Sportswear". The code takes the core labour standards of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and several additional standards as its guiding principles for acceptable working conditions in the garment industry. These include freedom of association, right to collective bargaining, no discrimination of any kind, no forced or slave labour, a minimum employment age of 15, health and safety measures, a maximum work week of 48 hours and voluntary overtime of 12 hours maximum, a right to a living wage and the establishment of an employment relationship. The model code outlines that companies at the top of the production chain have to comply with the set of ILO standards and guarantee their implementation down the entire production chain. Enforcement of the code should be overseen by an independent body that should be especially created. In this body unions, NGOs and companies should be represented. The model code also outlined what a code should not do: it should never replace collective bargaining agreements or undercut national labour law. But why was the CCC model code developed? And how is it different, both in content and in purpose, from the codes developed by companies themselves?

The model code was developed because those in the campaign and CCC partners recognized that there was need for a unified standard to campaign around. They felt that there should be consensus and clarity of our demands in relation to labour standards. Coming together behind a common code would demonstrate the broadness and international nature of the support for these standards. It would also provide a challenge to the weak codes that were being developed and promoted by garment and sportswear companies. The CCC saw an opportunity to make monitoring and verification of labour standards part of the discussion (at that time these processes were referred to as "independent monitoring"), by including demands for such systems in the CCC model code.

Years of meetings, drafts, and debates took place resulting in a finished CCC model code in 1997, which was presented in early 1998. It was signed by international trade union organizations (ITGLWF (1), ETUC/TCL, WCL), several Asian organizations and networks (from Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Hong Kong) and all of the approximately 250 NGOs and trade unions in the European CCC coalitions.

Today it might seem strange that this process was not a global one, but at that time a global consultation process was far beyond the scope of the CCC. The campaign did have contacts in Central America, but by and large these countries were producing for the United States market and therefore had a much stronger link to labour rights organizations in the United States then to those in the European campaigns. Generally, garments in Western Europe came from Asia and Eastern Europe, but Eastern Europe was still "closed territory" in terms of contacts with local groups and knowledge of the industry.

The code is intended for all retailers, as well as manufacturers and all companies positioned in between those in the apparel and sportswear industry supply chain. It applies to all of the companies' contractors, subcontractors, suppliers and licensees world-wide, and also to home-based workers and to workers engaged either informally or on a contractual basis.

The following site provides an English version of the model code of labour practices for the apparel industry, including sportswear, developed by the Clean Clothes Campaign in February 1998: CCC Model Code

The Model Code was translated into Austrian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian and Spanish. For the signatory list, kindly refer to the following site: http://www.cleanclothes.org/codes/ccccode-support.htm.

The code debate in context discusses the early years of the Dutch campaign and why a charter and a foundation to oversee its' implementation, were proposed as tools in the struggle to improve workers' rights. It discusses the code's evolvement over time and where it is today

• March 1999, The Code Debate in Context: A Decade of Campaigning for Clean Clothes, by Nina Ascoly and Ineke Zeldenrust.

Notes:
1) The ITGLWF is the International Textile, Carment and Leather Workers' Federation, a global union federation that brings together trade union organizations representing workers in the textile, garment and leather industries in 110 countries.