Businesses have always tried to cut costs in a competitive market, some employing unethical measures in the process. Three plaintiffs are suing Nestlé, Archer-Daniels-Midland and Cargill claiming they were trafficked from their home in Mali and forced to harvest cocoa beans in Ivory Coast as children without pay. Find out the full story and how you can investigate possible use of forced or child labor in your own supply chain.
Topics:
Social Compliance
Worker interviews during a social compliance audit remain an important aspect of investigating if your supplier is compliant with international or brand/retailer standards. An auditor will ask questions about working hours, wages and conditions to uncover whether or not local laws or standards are being violated at the factory. But it’s important to understand that the efforts of worker interviewers can be thwarted by factory management. Still, a social compliance audit remains one of the best ways to investigate your supplier.
Topics:
Social Compliance
Supply chain negligence can cost you dearly. Importers can learn a lot from the failures of major brands – how to avoid issues with food safety and forced labor and how to correct them. An internal investigation by Nestlé S.A. found slavery in their own supply chain in Thailand, made headlines last week. How does Nestlé’s story stand out as an example for importers of supply chain mistakes? And what lessons can you learn from its telling?
Topics:
Social Compliance
If you’re importing from a supplier overseas it can be difficult to find transparency. The SA8000 standard has requirements for investigating forced labor, child labor, health & safety and many others common to major brand and retailers. Certification in the SA8000 standard can go a long way in showing you what’s really going on in the factories that manufacture your products.
Topics:
Social Compliance
Most major retailers have their own set of standards for social compliance. But generally, you’ll see some overlap in areas of focus like local law, labor practices, working environment and others. Let’s take a look at a couple international retailers' social compliance standards and some differences in their standards for supplier selection and auditing processes.
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Social Compliance
Transparency in manufacturing can make or break a retailer or distributor’s image. Social compliance audits are one of the most powerful tools used to ensure a factory is abiding by local laws and following an ethical and moral business culture. There are many areas that a social compliance audit can clarify about your factory. Here are the 4 most common issues they can bring to light regarding your supplier.
Topics:
Social Compliance
What relevance does corporate social responsibility (CSR) play in the world of manufacturing? And how important is CSR to the consumers that buy your products?
Topics:
Social Compliance
Social compliance means that the factory meets its social obligation concerning working conditions, worker’s health insurance and labor practices. A social compliance audits investigate factories to make sure they are consistently within the ethical framework of standards. In this article, we discuss a few of the benefits to importers that conduct a social compliance audit, aside from helping to protect factory workers from unsafe working conditions.
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Social Compliance
There are many different frameworks you can use to conduct a social compliance audit. The questions these frameworks use and the areas they focus on also differ. In this article, we'll tell you about four common areas where we typically find social compliance infractions.
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Social Compliance
I wanted to talk to someone relatively new to the manufacturing scene in China to see what his first impressions were of Chinese factory conditions and whether or not his expectations were met. I asked Client Manager George Huang to join me for a similar podcast interview to discuss his viewpoints on the working conditions of the factories in China he visited in recent weeks. Here is what George had to say.
Topics:
Social Compliance
