A short while ago, I decided to email clothing supplier Land’s End to ask them about the ethical status of some of their products. Noting that their products were ‘imported’, i enquired as to where the products were sourced from and the conditions in the factories where they were produced.
Somewhat misinterpreting my question, but responding very promptly they commented:
We’ve heard similar comments from many of our customer [sic]. As much as we would like to offer USA made clothing items we are simply unable to locate many manufacturers that are in the USA. We work with many manufacturing companies that are USA owned companies but their manufacturing facilities are over seas. We inspect each manufacturing facility to be sure they are good work environments as well as that the workers are paid fair wages before we agree to use these companies to produce our products.
Thanking them for the speed of their response, my subsequent email (of March 11th) assured them that I understood that many products had to be sourced outside of the USA and asked whether they had any third-party inspection or certification of the labour standards in these factories.
When by March 24th I had yet to receive a response, I forwarded my email to them with a note asking if they’d had time to respond. The response came within twenty minutes.
In that email they detailed the requirements they have for any contractors they work with, including a sound approach to child labour (no-one under 16 unless it’s part of a school work placement scheme), freedom of association for employees and anti-discrimation policies. The details offered on wages are not quite so well worded, however:
“Workers must be paid wages and benefits which at a minimum comply with any applicable law and match the prevailing local industry practices.”
It is all well and good to contextualise pay agreements—you probably don’t want to entirely distort a local economy—but if a factory is in an area filled with sweatshops, this requirement really isn’t asking very much.
On top of that they haven’t actually answered my key question:
“I was wondering whether you are engaged in any agreements which ensure third-party monitoring of working conditions”
It is encouraging that I am not the only person to have contacted Land’s End about such issues. It is also encouraging that with a little prompting they are able to produce details of their policies on a range of important issues, but it would be good to see an answer to the question I have now asked several times.
Corporate Social Responsibility is all well and good, but the track record of such endeavours suggests that independent monitoring is a vital part of any social responsibility policy. While many companies have made great steps in the past few years to bring in social responsibility programmes, the idea of third-party involvement remains anathema to most. This is a key reason why international trade agreements need to lay out minimum standards for human and environmental stewardship, and ways of enforcing them.