The CCC takes the position that a company's responsibility encompasses its complete subcontracting chain all the way down to garment homeworkers. Subcontracting is a system used to reduce costs or enhance flexibility by contracting work out to suppliers in whose factories workers often suffer from worse conditions and more labour rights violations than in the buyer company. Restricting compliance with a code of labour standards to only one or a limited number of tiers of suppliers could actually result in more subcontracting to suppliers whose workers are not covered by the code.

According to the CCC, the responsibility of the clothes producer or retailer does not extend to conditions in fibre, cloth or thread-producing textile factories, which have their own specific problems.

What about small- or medium-sized companies with limited resources? They surely cannot be held responsible for working conditions in their supply chain to the same extent as powerful transnational companies?

It is obvious that all companies have a responsibility. If companies - large and small - are able to commit important resources to, for example, the quality control of their products, they should be able to commit sufficient resources to ensuring that workers enjoy human and labour rights and decent working conditions. To take up their responsibility, small- or medium-sized companies need not necessarily work individually. They can collaborate and, for example, join a project via their respective federations and so exchange information on systems, methods and procedures and share the cost of monitoring and verifying conditions in their supply chains. In the Netherlands, for example, the small- and medium-sized clothing retailers and producers participate in the Fair Wear Foundation through their federations MITEX and MODINT.

For more FAQs about the CCC, please visit: www.cleanclothes.org/faq/index.htm