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NEWSLETTER 20, Dec 2005
Stakeholder Meetings on Codes
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Three national level roundtables (in Austria, France and Sweden)
and two thematic workshops in the UK and Germany brought together
key stake-holders as part of an EU-funded project called "Towards
credible European code implementation and verification".
The project aimed to widen the debate on code implementation
to new people and organisations, and to improve the quality
of that debate in order to understand better what is needed
for codes to actually improve workers' lives.
National level roundtables
A roundtable on monitoring and verification took place in
Lille on June 2nd 2005. This meeting was attended by around
60 people, including representatives from the EU, the Fair
Wear Foundation, local governments in France adopting ethical
purchasing guidelines, representatives from national retailers
and other companies, CCC groups, and groups from India and
Hong Kong. The presentation of a global framework agreement
signed at EDF (Electricité de France) including a
clause on subcontracting attracted particular interest at
this roundtable.
In April, the roundtable "Social Responsibility in
the Garment and Sportswear Industry: Mechanisms for Independent
Monitoring", was held to present the work taking place
at an international level to Austrian industry, and to debate
the value of corporate social responsibility practices.
The seminar was organised by the CCC Austria in cooperation
with CSR-Austria, the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber,
the Federation of Austrian Industry, the ministry for economy,
the employee's union GPA, the metal and textile workers
union GMT, the chamber of workers, the Fair Wear Foundation
and Fairtrade Austria. At the end of the workshop, it was
agreed that the industry federations would present the outcomes
of the roundtable in their newsletters, thereby presenting
them to managers in the industry.
The aim of the Swedish roundtable organised by the Swedish
CCC in Stockholm, was to "break the ice" since
recently stakeholder dialogue in Sweden has not been extensive.
The roundtable focussed on freedom of association. Renée
Andersson from the retailer Indiska stressed the structural
problems regarding the attitude of most workers and management
towards trade unions, stemming from both workers' lack of
awareness of trade unions, and the lack of interest by management
in the workforce as a source of human capacity. She therefore
suggested that workers' committees were a good starting
point for dialogue between management and workers. Other
participants questioned the adequacy of workers' committees
since they do not have a mandate to negotiate with employers
nor to make legitimate demands, and, furthermore, are undermined
due to the presence of management in the committees.
Several of the companies that participated in the roundtable
are relatively small and are inexperienced in working with
codes of conduct, or at least in terms of effective code
implementation. For them the roundtable was an important
opportunity to learn more about the issues and the different
stakeholder positions.
Thematic workshops
The CCC organised a side meeting at the ETI conference
on purchasing practices in May 2005, which was attended
by European CCC coordinators and other NGO participants
to the ETI conference. To read more about purchasing practices,
please see page 10.
In September, the CCC organised a one-day workshop on "Implementing
Codes of Conduct with Emphasis on Freedom of Association
(FoA) and Collective Bargaining (CB)", at the IG Metall
head office in Frankfurt (Germany), bringing together participants
from European companies, trade unions, NGOs and multi-stakeholder
initiatives.
In her presentation, Karin Curtis of the International
Labour Organisation stressed that while governments are
ultimately responsible for ensuring rights, many countries
lack the necessary infrastructure to do so. This is where
codes are interesting, to assist in promoting these rights.
Doug Miller of the international trade union federation
ITGLWF pointed out that most code violations are related
to FoA. He also emphasised the widespread fear of victimisation
among workers, and argued that the fear suppliers had of
unions needed to be removed. In the panel discussion that
followed Auret van Heerden, of the Fair Labor Association,
underlined that FoA is a fundamental right that potentially
unlocks possibilities for ensuring other rights. As Peter
Schmitt of Just Solutions argued, however, FoA is often
ranked very low on compliance managers' radar screens, far
behind child labour or health and safety issues. Discussing
the issue of parallel means of worker organising in China,
Frank Henke, global director of social and environmental
affairs for adidas, stressed the importance of moving away
from just monitoring standards towards more worker participation
in code compliance initiatives. He also said that Chinese
authorities need to be approached cautiously on this issue.
Jantien Meijer of the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) explained
that while the FWF does accept companies that source in
China, it requires them to initiate a training programme
at their Chinese supplier leading to a workers' welfare
committee with elected representatives.
A primer on FoA prepared for this workshop is available
at
www.cleanclothes.org/codes/05-foa_primer.htm
