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Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information (2004)

Chapter: 3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems

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Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
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3
Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems

Over the last several years, a new set of regulatory processes has emerged to respond to concerns about “sweatshop” conditions through the development and implementation of nongovernmental systems of labor monitoring and reporting. These nongovernmental monitoring systems seek to affect firms across their supply chains through “voluntary” standards (sometimes developed in cooperation with nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] and unions), internal and external monitoring systems, new sanctions and incentives, and different levels of public reporting.

In order to advance their strategies, the nongovernmental monitoring organizations are taking on activities that were previously the purview of state and international regulatory bodies. They are working to fill holes in traditional government regulation and to transform the nature of existing monitoring. These initiatives involve new forms of collaboration, new roles for NGOs, new responsibilities of firms, new responses from local and national government authorities, and most important for this study, new types of information on the compliance of firms with international labor standards.

These nongovernmental systems of labor monitoring and reporting are expanding extremely rapidly across industries and regulatory arenas—now covering garments, shoes, toys, forest products, oil and gas, mining, chemicals, coffee, electronics, and even tourism (Herrnstadt, 2001; Gereffi et al., 2001; Wick 2001; Cashore, 2002). However, to date very little rigor-

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

ous analysis has been conducted on the effects and implications of these potentially transformative institutions, and the analysis that has been conducted has been highly contentious, either advocating programs or dismissing them out of hand.

Advocates tout these initiatives as more flexible, efficient, democratic, and effective than traditional labor regulation (see, e.g., Bernstein, 2001), while critics conversely assert that nongovernmental monitoring is a corrupt attempt to free industry from the last vestiges of state regulation and union organizing (see, e.g., Justice, 2001). Proponents argue that these systems can supplement and even support government regulation; opponents assert that nongovernmental monitoring implicitly challenges the legitimacy and efficacy of state regulation. Some fear nongovernmental systems of monitoring will preempt or “crowd out” workers’ organizing efforts and the current role of unions; others believe these systems can support worker empowerment and participation in shop-floor negotiations. Some believe the new monitoring and certification will provide consumers with a false sense that problems have been solved and will demobilize international labor and environmental campaigns; others see the information generated by nongovernmental monitoring as key to transforming how people produce, consume, and regulate around the world.

This chapter seeks to describe and assesses the nature of these initiatives and, in particular, the information they are producing on compliance with international labor standards. Based on interviews with staff of each of the leading initiatives in the United States and Europe, interviews with multinational managers and advocacy organizations, a review of the existing literature and program documents, and direct evaluation of monitoring activities in China, Korea, Indonesia, and Mexico, the chapter details efforts at nongovernmental labor monitoring, explains how these systems function, describes the challenges they face, and evaluates their effectiveness in improving labor practices.

The chapter also discusses the information made available through voluntary codes and monitoring systems, to whom this information is made available, and for what purposes. It also briefly discusses information quality and reliability issues, and the relevance and value of this factory- and brand-level data for evaluating national compliance with international labor standards. The chapter concludes with a discussion of means to strengthen information access through nongovernmental regulatory programs and to more generally support efforts to improve conditions in the global workplace.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

NEW SYSTEMS OF LABOR MONITORING

Nongovernmental systems of labor monitoring and reporting are both more diverse and “messier” than traditional regulatory approaches, going beyond fixed rules and standards, government monitoring and enforcement, and judicial review (Arthurs, 2001; Lipschutz, 2000; Reinicke, 1998). Nongovernmental initiatives involve multiple actors in new roles and relationships, experimenting with new processes of standard setting, monitoring, benchmarking, public reporting, and enforcement. In a number of ways, these new initiatives follow the evolving global production processes. As networks of production extend out along increasingly complex supply chains, interested stakeholders are exploring systems of dispersed but interconnected monitoring. These emerging systems are almost as complex as the supply chains they seek to monitor. A critical shift in this process is the move from factory-centered, state regulation that focuses on individual sites of production to supply-chain and brand monitoring that focuses on multiple actors in a production chain. This shift involves establishing systems of accountability and management of performance across factories and nations. The new monitoring system attempts to create a network of regulators that involve multiple stakeholders along global supply chains.

While traditional regulation involves a national government establishing standards and policing performance, in contrast, outsourced monitoring involves NGOs and firms in standard setting and regulations, with the International Labour Organization (ILO) core standards and local laws as minimum standards. While traditional regulation uses state sanctions to enforce standards, outsourced monitoring relies largely on market sanctions—either through interfirm purchasing decisions or NGO consumer campaigns. While government regulation is hierarchical and arms-length, outsourced monitoring is networked at multiple levels and engaged with multiple actors in the supply chain.

Nongovernmental monitoring is actually a diverse family of regulatory strategies, many of which are currently in competition. Even the terminology used to describe these systems is contested. In this chapter we use “internal monitoring” to refer to monitoring conducted by brands and retailers, “external monitoring” to refer to monitoring conducted by third-party organizations, and “verification” to refer to independent evaluations (not paid for by those being monitored) of the results of codes and monitoring systems.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

CODES OF CONDUCT

Nongovernmental monitoring systems are based on voluntary standards, usually embodied in codes of conduct, which specify norms and rules by which to evaluate factory performance. These standards are sometimes quite specific, detailing precise rules of action; in other cases, they present only general principles of good practice (Braithwaite and Drahos, 2000). In both the United States and Europe, NGOs are now at the fore-front of efforts to develop entirely new institutions (some nongovernmental, some public-private partnerships) to advance codes and to define institutional procedures to monitor compliance. Increased pressure from labor and human rights groups has motivated a growing number of multinational corporations to adopt codes of conduct and to submit to some form of external monitoring.1

Codes related to labor standards were originally quite diverse (Varley, 1998; Diller, 1999; Compa and Hinchliffe-Darricarrere, 1995) but appear to be converging now around the ILO core standards and basic principles regarding health and safety, wages and hours, and treatment of women.2 While the general range of issues addressed in these systems is fairly similar (van Tulder and Kolk, 2001), the details of codes can vary considerably. Table 3-1 presents a summary of the codes of conduct advanced by the four primary U.S. monitoring systems. Key debates continue around such issues as freedom of association, wages (minimum vs. prevailing vs. “living”), and the scope of “nondiscrimination” clauses.

The multiplicity of codes of conduct, however, is a cause for concern. Multiple codes of conduct can lead to excessive and contradictory monitoring of a single factory and to managerial resistance to attempts at positive change. Also, in some countries, there may be a discrepancy between the host country’s labor laws and the terms set forth by codes of conduct. In such instances, companies may be pressured to comply with the less stringent national labor law or with the least stringent code of conduct. Systems for implementing and evaluating code compliance are obviously critical to the credibility of these codes. To these ends a number of initiatives have

1  

For comparisons of company codes, see van Tulder and Kolk (2001) or company web pages, such as http://www.nikebiz.com [October 16, 2003] and www.gapinc.com [October 16, 2003].

2  

Nadvi and Wältring (2001, p. 34) note that “despite the toothless nature of core labour standards, they have become a model for private social standards.”

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

emerged over the last several years to foster the implementation, monitoring, and verification of codes.

INTERNAL FIRM COMPLIANCE MONITORING

Many large brands and retailers have developed procedures for monitoring supplier compliance with their newly created codes of conduct. The Gap, for instance, has a Vendor Compliance Department with more than 100 staff who are responsible for monitoring the implementation of the company’s code of conduct throughout its global supply chain. Levi’s, Disney, Wal-Mart, H&M, and other companies have established similar programs. These systems can either be extensions of existing supply-chain management programs—simply adding labor, human rights, and environmental concerns to current systems for evaluating quality, timeliness, price, etc.—or they can involve entirely new systems for internal monitoring and evaluation. Some companies are asking their quality control and purchasing staff to take on code compliance as an additional task, while others are hiring dedicated staff to conduct precertification audits of contractors and ongoing assessments of code compliance.

Nike was one of the first companies in the apparel and footwear industries to develop an internal compliance division.3 In 1992, Nike established a code of conduct on labor and environmental practices for its network of suppliers which now cover more than 900 factories with more than 650,000 workers around the world. Supplier compliance with the code is monitored through a program of internal evaluation conducted first by Nike staff and then reviewed by external accounting, health and safety, and environmental consulting firms. Nike has developed internal monitoring tools, such as its SHAPE (Safety, Health, Attitude of Management, People Investment, and Environment) Audit and MESH (Management, Environment, Safety, and Health) Program that allow the company to integrate the evaluation of labor and environmental issues into broader management practices and training.4 MESH resembles the 14000 Management Auditing Program of the International Organization for Standardization, though

3  

Levi Strauss is reported to have developed the first code of conduct in the industry in 1991 (http://www.levistrauss.com/responsibility/conduct).

4  

See http://www.nike.com/nikebiz/nikebiz.jhtml?page=25&cat=compliance&subcat=mesh [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

TABLE 3-1 Codes of Conduct

Standard

Fair Labor Association (FLA)a

SA8000b

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Productionc

Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)d

Child labor, minimum age

15 or 14 if country of manufacturer allows or age for completing compulsory education.

15 or 14 if meets developing country exemption, or local minimum age if older.

14 or age for completing schooling or minimum age established by law, whichever is older.

15 or 14 if consistent with ILO practices for developing countries.

Harassment and abuse

No employee shall be subject to any physical, sexual, psychological, or verbal harassment or abuse.

No corporal punishment, mental or physical coercion, or verbal abuse; no sexually coercive or exploitative behavior.

No harassment, abuse, or corporal punishment in any form.

No employee shall be subject to any physical, sexual, psychological, or verbal harassment or abuse; no corporal punishment.

Nondiscrimination

No discrimination in hiring, salary, benefits, advancement, discipline, termination or retirement, on basis of gender, race religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, nationality, political opinion, or social or ethnic origin.

No discrimination in hiring, compensation, access to training, promotion, termination, or retirement based on race, caste, national origin, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, union membership, or political affiliation.

No discrimination on basis of personal characteristics or beliefs; question about discrimination based on seniority.

No discrimination in employment, including hiring, salary, benefits, advancement, discipline, termination, or retirement, on the basis of gender, race, religion, age, disability, sexual orientation, political opinion, or social or ethnic origin

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Freedom of association and collective bargaining

If right restricted by law, employer shall not seek state assistance to prevent workers exercising right to freedom of association.

If right restricted by law, employer facilitates parallel means for free association and bargaining.

Lawful right of free association, including right to join or not join an association.

No employee shall be subject to harassment, intimidation, or retaliation in efforts to freely associate.

Health and safety

Safe and healthy working environment is required. Standard also applies to employer-operated facilities apart from production facilities ( e.g.,housing).

Safe and healthy working environment is required. If provided, housing should be clean and safe. Steps are taken to prevent accidents and injury. Regular health and safety training is required.

Safe and healthy working environment is required. If provided, housing should be safe and healthy.

Safe and healthy working environment is required.

Wages

Local minimum wage or prevailing industry wage, whichever is higher, and legally mandated benefits.

Legal or prevailing industry wage and meet basic needs and provide discretionary income.

Legal minimum wage.

Legal minimum wage and benefits. WRC code requires paying a “living wage.”

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Standard

Fair Labor Association (FLA)a

SA8000b

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Productionc

Workers Rights Consortium (WRC)d

Hours of work

8 hours per week and 12 hours overtime or the limits on regular and overtime hours allowed by the law of the country; 1 day off in every 7.

48 hours per week and 12 hours overtime maximum. Personnel shall be provided with at least 1 day off in every 7-day period. All overtime work shall be reimbursed at a premium rate.

Shall not exceed the legal limitations of the countries in which apparel is produced; 1 day off in every 7- day period, except as required to meet urgent business needs.

Not be required to work more than the lesser of (a) 48 hours per week or (b) the limits on regular hours allowed by the law of the country of manufacture, and be entitled to at least 1 day off in every 7-day period, as well as holidays and vacations.

aFor more information, see http://www.fairlabor.org [November 24, 2003].

bFor more information, see http://www.SA8000.org [November 24, 2003].

cFor more information, see http://www.wrapapparel.org [November 24, 2003]

dFor more information, see http://www.workersrights.org [November 24, 2003].

SOURCES: Data from organizational websites and Maquila Solidarity Network (2001b).

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

it seeks to go further by evaluating actual factory performance. Nike now has more than 85 staff who monitor labor and environmental conditions in the company’s contractor factories. Reebok and Adidas, Nike’s main competitors, along with many other prominent footwear and apparel firms, have established similar programs that combine in-house assessment with audits by consulting firms. Reebok, for instance, has instituted a worldwide Human Rights Production Standards Factory Performance Assessment System, while Adidas has created “standards of engagement” for labor practices and health, safety, and the environment for all its subcontractors.5

Through these auditing tools, companies like Nike, Reebok, and Adidas now regularly rate their subcontractors for environmental and labor performance. In the case of Nike, points are assigned for performance in a wide range of categories, with double weight given to labor and environmental performance rankings. Subcontractors are then told how they rate against other subcontractors in the same country. High scorers often garner more lucrative orders, while low scorers risk losing contracts. Nike bases these labor and environmental programs on long-standing quality control management systems for evaluating and ranking subcontractors. Requirements to improve labor conditions simply extend the scope of commitments agreed to in the code of conduct and subcontractor memorandum of understanding. Providing some evidence that this effort is earnest, Nike, Reebok, and Adidas have cancelled a handful of contracts due to poor performance and an unwillingness of these firms to change.

It is hard to determine how much change has resulted from firm-led codes of conduct and monitoring. There is little research on the effects of codes and self-monitoring on actual workplace conditions since most of these programs remain confidential. Firms naturally assert that these systems respond effectively and sufficiently to labor concerns. Many companies continue to argue that they alone (perhaps with the assistance of a consulting firm) have the knowledge and ability to solve labor problems. However, judging by press reports, neither activists nor the general public put much credence in corporate self-evaluation and monitoring (Connor 2001a, 2001b). A number of prominent retailers and brands in the United States, such as Wal-Mart, have nonetheless continued to advance tightly controlled versions of self-monitoring that provide very little, if any, pub-

5  

Information from interviews with staff of Nike, Reebok, and Adidas in 2000 and 2001.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

licly verifiable information. On the basis of recent cases in which codes and monitoring have been used for public relations rather than improving labor conditions, many people criticize these voluntary codes and internal monitoring for their vulnerability to corporate manipulation (O’Rourke, 2002).

EXTERNAL MONITORING AND CERTIFICATION

Growing public awareness and activist pressure has led to a recent proliferation of programs in the United States and Europe to establish standardized codes of conduct and systems of monitoring that are conducted by accredited third-party auditors. Three such major initiatives have emerged in the United States: the Fair Labor Association (FLA), Social Accountability International (SAI), and the Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) certification program. Each of these programs has a code of conduct informed largely by ILO core standards and a system for accrediting external organizations to monitor compliance with the code. A small army of monitors including accounting firms, professional service firms, and small nonprofit organizations are emerging to provide these third-party monitoring services (Bartley, 2001).6 External monitoring systems differ in key procedures for auditing (who conducts the monitoring and how), certification (whether a factory or a brand is certified), and reporting (what is publicly disclosed). Table 3-2 highlights the differences in these systems.

Fair Labor Association

The Fair Labor Association (FLA), convened originally by the Clinton administration in 1996 as the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), is both the oldest and most controversial of current initiatives to establish monitor-

6  

Private, for-profit monitors include PricewaterhouseCoopers (recently spun off as Global Social Compliance), Cal-Safety Compliance Corporation, International Certification Services, Det Norske Veritas, Bureau Veritas Quality International, Intertek Testing Service, Merchandise Testing Labs, MFQ, Sandler & Travis, Centro per l’Innovzione e lo Sviluppo Economico, RWTUV Far East Thailand, Global Standards-Toan Tin Vietnam, and KPMG. Nonprofit groups include the U.S. NGO Verité, the Guatemalan Commission for the Monitoring of Code of Conduct, the Independent Monitoring Group of El Salvador, Phulki (a Bangladeshi NGO), and the Honduran Independent Monitoring Team.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

TABLE 3-2 U.S.-Based Nongovernmental Monitoring and Certification Systems

Standard

Fair Labor Association (FLA)

SA8000

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP)

Scope

Apparel and footwear companies; licensees of affiliated universities.

Factories producing a wide range of products.

Apparel industry.

Governance

12-Member board with 6 industry representatives, 5 NGOs, 1 university representative.

Governing board has 5 members, composed of 1 representative from Council on Economic Priorities, 3 lawyers, and 1 business person. SAI also has an advisory board with more diverse membership.

Board of 3 officers and 8 directors form the Independent Certification Board, primarily industry representatives.

Monitoring process

Companies must conduct internal monitoring of at least one-half of their applicable facilities during the first year and all of the second year.

Companies commit to use independent external monitors accredited and selected by the FLA to conduct periodic inspections of at least 30 percent of their facilities during their initial 3-year participation period.

Manufacturers or suppliers are granted the status of “applicants ” for 1 year until they are verified by an accredited certification auditor. The SA8000 certificate must be renewed every 2 years.

Specially trained local audit teams will be briefed by local NGOs and unions,speak to managers and workers, and check the records of the factories. The SA8000 “guidance document ” is the

Factories must undergo a three-step process: self-assessment, independent monitoring, and final review and follow-up.

Factories contract and schedule selected independent monitors to perform on-site evaluations. Based on this evaluation, the independent monitor will either recommend that the facility be certified

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Standard

Fair Labor Association (FLA)

SA8000

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP)

 

Factories are selected by FLA staff,with a focus on the largest and those with greatest risk of noncompliance. All monitoring must involve local NGOs. Monitors will use a combination of announced and unannounced visits.

SAI manual, which assists the accredited auditors in fulfilling this task. NGOs are also encouraged to undergo the process of becoming accredited SAI auditors.

Factories self-select for certification.

or identify areas for corrective action before such a recommendation can be made.

Factories self-select for certification.

Certification

FLA certifies an entire brand. A service mark will be developed so consumers know which companies are participating and which have met the standards for certification. Timely remediation, assessed by monitors and FLA staff, is required for certification.

Certification means that a facility has been examined in accordance with SAI auditing procedures and found to be in conformance. Auditors look for evidence of effective management systems and performance that prove compliance. Certified facilities are subject to semiannual surveillance audits.

The WRAP certification board will review the documentation of compliance and decide upon certification. The term of certification will be specified by the board, based on a criteria of risk factors. Over the term of the certification, the facility may or may not receive an unannounced inspection to verify continued compliance.

Company requirements

Companies must implement the FLA code; internally monitor every factory every year according

Manufacturers and suppliers adopt a program to pursue SA8000 certification. Retailers become

Factories must meet WRAP principles and bear all costs of certification. Factories must

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Standard

Fair Labor Association (FLA)

SA8000

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP)

 

to FLA monitoring principles; and participate in independent external monitoring every year. All internal and external monitoring must include local NGOs.

“SA8000 Members ”and publicly announce their commitment to seek out socially responsible suppliers and assist suppliers in meeting the SA8000 social standards.

apply, be registered in the WRAP Certification Program, and perform self-assessment of their facility with the WRAP Handbook to determine if their facility complies with the WRAP Principles.

Reporting

All internal and external monitoring reports will be provided in full to the FLA staff. The FLA will evaluate audits, jointly develop remediation plans,and then publish summary reports of audit remediation results.

Audit reports go to the companies and to SAI. Other parties can only receive them after having signed a confidentiality agreement with the company management and the audit company.

Audit reports are provided to factories and the WRAP board.

Public disclosure

Annual reports on each company are required, based on internal and external monitoring.Participating companies are publicly listed on website FLA. No disclosure of locations of certified factories.

The public is informed only of factories granted certification.

There is no public reporting and no mention of sites that receive, fail, or lose certification.

 

SOURCE: Data from organizational websites.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

ing and verification. The FLA originally focused only on the apparel and footwear industries but has recently expanded to cover other industries that produce university-logo goods. As of May 2002, the FLA consisted of 13 footwear and apparel firms, several NGOs, and about 170 university affiliates.7 Notably, several union and NGO members of the original AIP left the organization when it evolved into the FLA in protest of what they believed were insurmountable flaws in the organization and its monitoring procedures.

The FLA has a Workplace Code of Conduct and Principles for Monitoring, accredits monitors, reviews audits, and reports on audit results. The FLA advances a monitoring system that requires companies seeking certification to first inspect (internally) at least half of their factories during the first year and all of their factories during the second year. Companies are then required to hire external monitors to evaluate at least 30 percent of their supplier factories during the first 2-3 years of the certification process.8 Over 2,000 internal audits have been conducted to date.

The FLA model has come under fire from a number of unions, NGOs, and student activists for being overly controlled by industry (Benjamin, 1998; Maquila Solidarity Network, 2001a). Critics pointed out that firms could select and directly pay their own monitors, have a say in which factories are audited, and only disclose summaries of auditing results (Sethi, 2003). Student activists have also criticized the FLA for failing to advance a living wage and for not sufficiently supporting union and women’s rights.

The board of the FLA responded to these criticisms by taking much more control over external monitoring. The FLA staff now selects factories for audits on the basis of information from a variety of sources, chooses the

7  

FLA members include Nike, Reebok, Liz Claiborne, Patagonia, Levi’s, Adidas, Eddie Bauer, Polo Ralph Lauren, L.L. Bean, Nicole Miller, Phillips Van-Heusen, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, the International Labor Rights Fund, the RFK Memorial Center for Human Rights, and the National Consumers League.

8  

The FLA has to date accredited 11 organizations to carry out this “external” monitoring. Each of these monitors is accredited to inspect factories in specific countries. These include A&L Group, Cal Safety Compliance Corporation, Cotecna Inspections, COVERCO, Global Standards/Toan Tin, Intertek Testing Services, Kenan Institute Asia, LIFT-Standards, Merchandise Testing Labs Brand Integrity, Phulki, and Verite. As of June 2002, 982 companies had applied for certification, the majority of which were small university licensees.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

monitoring organization, and contracts directly with that organization.9 In addition, the staff has created a channel for receiving direct and confidential complaints of labor rights violations from any interested individual or organization.

Using this new approach, the FLA engaged monitors in 2002 to audit labor conditions at the BJ&B baseball cap factory in the Dominican Republic. When selecting this factory for an audit, the FLA drew on several sources of information, including reports of anti-union discrimination from student activists (Gonzales, 2003) and a direct complaint to FLA from Nike, Reebok, and Adidas, charging their BJ&B supplier with violations of freedom of association. The FLA worked closely with the companies and with the Worker Rights Consortium to pressure factory managers to respect worker rights, and in March 2003 the union and factory management signed a collective bargaining agreement (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2003a). More recently, the FLA sent an external monitor to Primo, a U.S.-owned garment factory in El Salvador, largely on the basis of information from a labor rights group charging Primo managers with discriminating against union organizers when hiring (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2003a).

The FLA has also increased its public disclosure, publishing tracking charts that summarize audit results from 50 factories on its website in June 2003. Although the tracking charts do not reveal factory locations, they do identify the company, the country, the type of product, and number of workers employed. The charts also describe the labor rights problems identified in the audits and corrective actions (Maitland, 2003; Fair Labor Association, 2003a). Publication of this information increases the transparency of the major companies’ labor practices. One labor rights group has already used the tracking charts to charge two FLA member companies with violating workers’ rights to freedom of association (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2003a).

Finally, the FLA has increased its efforts to work with member companies, local factory managers, and unions to address problems identified by external audits. For example, Guatemalan workers producing apparel for

9  

The staff selects a 5 percent sample of factories most at risk for labor problems from a list of factories provided by each member company. The companies pay for the external audits indirectly through a revolving loan trust established by FLA (Fair Labor Association, 2003a).

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Liz Claiborne lodged a direct complaint with FLA in the summer of 2003, alleging that their right to freedom of association had been violated. Earlier audits by FLA-accredited monitors had identified these problems, and Liz Claiborne had encouraged local managers to address them, but according to the new complaint, those efforts had failed. The FLA responded to these new allegations by helping to bring unions and management to the bargaining table and by contracting with an FLA-accredited monitor to monitor the negotiations. On July 16, 2003, the local parties reached agreement on a contract—the only collective bargaining agreement to date in the Guatemalan apparel and textile industry (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2003b; Fair Labor Association, 2003b).

Social Accountability International and SA8000

SA8000, a voluntary workplace standard patterned on those of the International Organization of Standardization, was created in 1997 by the Council on Economic Priorities (a U.S. NGO) and is administered by another NGO, Social Accountability International (SAI). SAI has an advisory board made up of representatives from multinational firms, international unions, and NGOs. SAI seeks to motivate factories as well as member brands in a wide range of industries to implement the SA8000 code of conduct and to be audited by accredited auditors. SAI is responsible for accrediting the auditing firms, conducting trainings for auditors, factory managers, and workers on the standards, and for publishing a list of factories meeting the SA8000 standard.

The SA8000 system differs from the FLA in a number of regards, most notably on the issues of wages, worker representation, and certification. SA8000 may be interpreted to include the requirement that factories pay workers a “living wage,” or what SAI refers to as a “basic needs” wage, as opposed to the FLA’s weaker requirements to pay the prevailing wage (see Table 3-1). SA8000 also requires firms to “facilitate parallel means of independent and free association and bargaining” in countries where it is not possible to form free trade unions (such as China). Both of these provisions remain highly controversial, as it is not clear, for instance, exactly what will qualify as effective parallel means of representation in countries such as China. SA8000 also includes a section on management systems, which “requires policies and procedures and documentation systems that demonstrate ongoing compliance with the standard.”

SA8000 also differs in that it certifies manufacturing facilities, not

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

brands or retailers. The idea behind this system is that brands and merchandisers will seek out factories that have received SA8000 certification (as they look to ISO 9000 certification to verify quality standards). SAI is also developing a signatory member program,10 which requires members to move their supplier factories toward SA8000 compliance and to periodically report progress in meeting these goals.

SAI discloses lists of certified facilities and their locations but does not publicly disclose which facilities have lost their certification or had their applications rejected. As of May 2003, 236 factories in 36 countries had been certified under SA8000; 50 of them are apparel and textile firms. It is not clear whether any of the signatory members’ affiliated facilities have received SA8000 certification.

A number of concerns have been raised about the SAI strategy. One is the limitations of a voluntary, factory-centered initiative that has to date certified only 200 factories of at least 100,000 factories producing for the U.S. market. The SA8000 auditing procedures have also been criticized by NGOs for a perceived corporate bias and weak controls on the quality of monitors (Labour Rights in China, 1999). No NGOs have been accredited within the SAI system. Professional service firms and quality testing firms conduct the auditing.

Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production

The Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP) Program might be viewed as industry’s version of external monitoring and certification. WRAP was developed in 1998 by the American Apparel Manufacturers Association (which recently became the American Apparel and Footwear Association [AAFA]) and began certifying factories in June 2000. WRAP’s board members include major apparel brands, such as Vanity Fair Corporation, Sara Lee, Kellwood, and Gerber Children wear. The WRAP certification board consists of individuals primarily from the private sector, with a nominal claim that the majority of its members are not directly affiliated with the apparel industry (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2001a).

Like the FLA and SA8000, WRAP has created its own code of con-

10  

Member organizations include Amana, Avon Products, Cutter and Buck, Dole Food, Eileen Fisher, Otto Versand, Toys R Us, and the U.N. Office of Project Services.

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

duct, which it calls the WRAP Principles. The 12 WRAP principles include common standards for child and forced labor and workplace and environmental protections. However, WRAP also contains unique requirements for customs compliance and drug interdiction efforts, which support tighter security controls over suppliers and shipments. However, the WRAP Principles are widely viewed as the weakest standards of any of the systems, with the least transparent monitoring and certification program (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2001b).

WRAP certifies factories not brands, which is similar in approach to SA8000. The WRAP certification board accredits firms to be external monitors of manufacturing facilities. WRAP has accredited six firms as monitors to date (Maquila Solidarity Network, 2001a), again primarily professional service firms such as ITS, Global Social Compliance (formerly PwC), BVQI, and Cal-Safety. Certification of facilities is valid for 1 year, and factories are required to undergo self-assessment and submit to external monitoring. External monitors submit facility monitoring reports to the WRAP certification board, which then reviews each report and decides for or against certification. On certification, facilities may or may not be subject to unannounced inspections. As of April 2002, approximately 200 factories had been certified by WRAP.

WRAP has been criticized by a range of stakeholders for its perceived industry bias and low level of public transparency. WRAP does not disclose the names or locations of certified or audited factories and has not disclosed any audits to date. WRAP also lacks any NGO or civil society participation in monitoring or verification. All audits are announced in advance and conducted by firms paid directly by the factories being audited.

European Monitoring Initiatives

A number of monitoring initiatives are also emerging across Europe, for instance, the government-created Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) was initiated in England in 1998. ETI is an alliance of companies, NGOs, and trade unions working to “identify and promote good practice in the implementation of codes of conduct of labour practice, including the monitoring and independent verification of the observance of code provisions.” ETI was established explicitly as an experimental, learning initiative, designed to help identify and disseminate information on how best to implement labor codes that benefit workers in global supply chains. ETI has conducted pilot projects in a number of countries, including apparel facto-

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

ries in Sri Lanka. These projects are key to the ETI strategy as they generate information on issues such as how to monitor for child labor, how to evaluate the quality of 1-day audits, how different actors can contribute to auditing, how best to establish worker complaint systems, etc. ETI reports the findings of its pilot projects and company internal auditing to member organizations only, not to the general public.

The Dutch established the Fair Wear Foundation (FWF) in 1999 (after 5 years of discussions and negotiations on code issues) to work with associations of small- and medium-sized enterprises to oversee the implementation of a standard code of conduct. The FWF requires companies to monitor their supply chains, with independent verification and effective worker complaint procedures. The foundation plans to certify companies that have a system in place to gather evidence on factory conditions in their supply chains. FWF is responsible for verifying that the code is being implemented in a percentage of each firm’s factories. The FWF has conducted pilot studies in India, Poland, Romania, and Indonesia to test its monitoring and verification procedures.

INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATIONS AND VERIFICATION

A major critique of many of these external monitoring systems has been that auditors in these programs are paid directly by the brands or factories being monitored. This potential conflict of interest raises concerns that monitoring is not truly independent and thus may miss or cover up problems in factories. As mentioned, the FLA board has responded to these critiques by approving a change in the process for hiring monitors so that firms will not be allowed to directly pay monitors. Nonetheless, an additional layer of nongovernmental monitoring has emerged to respond to this credibility concern. This independent monitoring and verification involves NGOs, unions, and private individuals who monitor firm performance without direct payment from those with a stake in auditing results. There are several institutionalized versions of independent monitoring in the United States and Europe.

Workers Rights Consortium

The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) was developed by the United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS) in cooperation with the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE), the American

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), and a number of human rights, labor, and religious NGOs in 1999. The WRC, with 82 college and university members as of June 2002, focuses primarily on factories that produce apparel with university logos.

The WRC uses three broad strategies: (1) inspecting factories from which the WRC has received worker complaints; (2) proactive inspections in countries with patterns of poor practice and worker organizing efforts; and (3) information disclosure requirements. The WRC does not certify company compliance with a code of conduct, conduct systematic monitoring, or accredit monitors. Instead, the WRC encourages (but does not require) participating universities to adopt codes of conduct that closely resemble the WRC’s model code, which includes strong provisions for a living wage, women’s rights, and recognition of workers’ rights to freedom of association. The WRC requires member universities to commit to broad public disclosure and to develop mechanisms to verify information reported by companies and their suppliers.

The WRC’s goal is to ensure that factories that produce university-branded apparel comply with a base code of conduct and, in particular, with rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining. The WRC also seeks to educate workers themselves about university codes so that workers can report code violations to local NGOs or the WRC. The WRC aims to work collectively with its university affiliates, the licensee corporations (the manufacturers), and local NGOs to correct problems that have been identified. The WRC’s investigative efforts rely on collaboration with local NGOs and activists, personnel from either the WRC, its board, or affiliated university members, and labor and human rights experts.

To date, the WRC has investigated conditions at four factories.11 The WRC makes all of its factory investigation reports public. The WRC is also developing a database of manufacturing facilities, which allows anyone with Internet access to search by factory name, location, or university affiliate.12 The WRC is increasingly focusing on remediation processes, working with universities and buyers (usually the brands) and workers’ organizations to

11  

They are the Kukdong garment factory in Puebla, Mexico; the New Era baseball cap factory in Buffalo, New York; the BJ&B cap factory in the Dominican Republic; and the PT Dada apparel and stuffed toy factory in Indonesia. These investigations have involved six to eight people for 5-6 days each.

12  

See http://www.workersrights.org/fdd.asp [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

negotiate solutions to problems raised by workers, with the hope that there will be some “ripple effect” to other factories in those regions.

The WRC has also been criticized (and publicly opposed) for its model of monitoring and reporting. Opponents have accused the WRC of representing a “gotcha” model of monitoring, more focused on pointing at problems and embarrassing firms than on resolving problems (Brown Daily Herald, 2000). And the WRC’s in-depth inspection system has been criticized for having a limited scope and coverage.

Related Initiatives

There are several other initiatives that, while not explicitly focused on labor codes and monitoring, are potentially supportive or complementary to nongovernmental monitoring. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), for instance, is a project to advance globally applicable guidelines for voluntary self-reporting of economic, environmental, and social performance of firms. The GRI is working to set a global standard for corporate reporting, creating a system analogous to financial reporting procedures for environmental and social issues. This standard, and broader efforts for corporate disclosure, could strengthen and help to standardize existing codes and monitoring systems.

The United Nations is also advancing voluntary codes and reporting systems through the Global Compact initiative, created by the U.N. Secretary General in 2000. The Global Compact is, in the words of the United Nations, “not a regulatory instrument or code of conduct, but a value-based platform designed to promote institutional learning. It utilizes the power of transparency and dialogue to identify and disseminate good practices based on universal principles.”13 To this end, the Global Compact asks companies to commit to respecting nine principles, including respect for human rights, labor rights (basically the ILO core standards), and the environment and to report annually on their progress on advancing these principles. The global compact and GRI now work together, and GRI reports qualify for global compact annual reporting. It should be noted however, that neither initiative requires external or independent monitoring or verification of any kind. These initiatives remain essentially self-reporting and disclosure systems.

13  

See http://www.unglobalcompact.org [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

Other codes and monitoring systems have also emerged in industrial sectors and issue areas outside the spotlight of the anti-sweatshop movement. As just one example, the Global Sullivan Principles, an initiative rooted in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, advances a broad corporate code of social responsibility that has been adopted by a range of firms around the world.

INFORMATION DISCLOSURE

The nongovernmental monitoring systems collect, analyze, and make public different types and levels of information. Some are completely confidential, providing information only to corporate managers. Others are fully transparent, with full investigation reports made public.

In general, most of the initiatives have now converged on codes of conduct that center around the ILO core labor standards, plus a number of other key issues: health and safety, wages and hours, and the treatment of women. Information is thus being collected on individual factory compliance with these standards. In countries where there is little state monitoring, that information may be the only information gathered on standards compliance.

The first critical piece of information made public by several of these initiatives is the names and locations of factories that provide products for U.S. brands and retailers. The student movement in the United States has made this a central demand of their campaigns and has been successful in winning fuller disclosure of factory locations from university licensees. It is now possible to identify factories that produce for leading colleges.14 Several brands have also voluntarily disclosed this information, although the vast majority do not.

A small number of firms are beginning to make public summaries of their external audit reports. Nike has published summaries of PricewaterhouseCoopers audits (under a program dubbed Transparency 101), aggregate data on factories that produce university-logo goods, and factory locations.15 Nike also recently published a corporate responsibility report in line with GRI reporting guidelines. Adidas recently published a

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

report disclosing the country locations of supplier factories, the number that have been audited, and the number of contracts terminated due to failures to comply with the company’s code.16 Adidas has also developed a supplier scoring system, and it releases aggregate data on scores for factories in Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Otto Versand similarly collects audit results (based on the SA8000 system) of its suppliers and analyzes compliance patterns across countries. These firms and others are gathering very rich data on factory practices and core standards compliance around the world. However, to date, very little of this information has been made public. And as mentioned, the majority of brands and retailers, and the largest firms in the world such as Wal-Mart, refuse to make public any information on the performance of the factories in their supply chain.

The multistakeholder initiatives also vary in their content and levels of public disclosure. The WRAP certification program currently provides virtually no information to the public, even on factories audited or certified. Presumably, the program will publish lists of certified factories in the future. SAI currently lists certified factories on its website and is in discussions about making public information on the resolution of complaints at SA8000-certified factories. SAI may in the future also make information available to researchers on corrective actions and patterns of compliance in certified factories. As mentioned, the FLA has recently agreed to make much more information public from its audit program. The FLA board has approved plans to publish summaries of audit reports and the first public report is available through the FLA website. The ETI employs a kind of “club transparency” for its audits: members of the ETI—including NGOs and union representatives—can review audit reports and aggregate data. However, this information is not available to the general public.

The WRC has committed to full public disclosure of monitoring results. Currently, all inspection reports are made public through its website and media releases. The reports provide detailed analyses of individual factories and insights into problems common in garment suppliers. The first WRC report—of the Kukdong garment factory (now known as Mexmode) in Puebla, Mexico—is touted as a major success, as the process has supported improvements in factory conditions and pay (workers have won a series of pay raises since the WRC investigation), the formation of an inde-

16  

See “clear” at http://www.adidas-salomon.com/ [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

pendent union, and the signing of a collective bargaining agreement (one of the first in a Mexican maquiladora factory). The WRC has also recently completed an investigation in Indonesia that has led to the remediation of existing problems and agreement to recognize multiple unions in the factory. The WRC has also developed a database of factory locations for member universities.17 Individual NGO exposes are also designed to be made public. A range of NGOs continue to conduct independent research and report on problems in factories around the world.

The information from these nongovernmental monitoring systems is currently being used by a range of actors. Brands and retailers are using factory monitoring information to evaluate, rank, and sometimes provide incentives (or sanctions) to suppliers. The media have used these reports to analyze current in the apparel industry around the world. And investors are increasingly looking to this information to evaluate specific companies.

Clearly, nongovernmental monitoring initiatives are at the very early stages of development, are trying to recruit new participants, and are thus often reluctant to be fully transparent about their processes and audit results. Companies remain concerned about disclosing information on factory locations (that might be used by their competitors or unions) and factory conditions (that might be used by their critics). Disclosure is thus still quite limited in these programs.

There are also questions about the quality of the information that is made public through these systems. Different actors have different interests in the outcomes of audits and reports. Both firms and activists may have biases in their reporting. (Government regulators, of course, are not free from bias themselves.) Perhaps more problematic is the currently unsystematic nature of data that are available. Reports come from individual exposés and partial samples of supply chains, so it is difficult to reach general conclusions even from detailed reports that are available. Without greater transparency on the processes for conducting audits, the public cannot evaluate the quality of the data generated by these initiatives.

EVALUATION

There are virtually no data available to analyze how effectively these systems of monitoring are currently performing. Developing measures to

17  

See http://www.workersrights.org/fdd.asp [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

evaluate nongovernmental monitoring remains a critical area for future research. However, there is some evidence from programs in the United States, and from sporadic reports from monitoring initiatives around the world, that can provide a beginning for evaluating nongovernmental monitoring.

For instance, more than 60 companies have signed agreements with the U.S. Department of Labor to conduct factory monitoring, and hundreds of other companies are conducting monitoring on their own. Private monitoring firms conducted more than 10,000 audits of garment shops in Los Angeles alone in 1998, which is about 10 times the number carried out by state and federal authorities (Esbenshade, 2000). Although this monitoring is generally unsystematic, with little oversight, no transparency, no sanctions for poor monitoring, and potential conflicts of interest of monitors, somewhat surprisingly, it has actually led to increased levels of compliance. As Esbenshade (2000, p. 5) reports:

Monitoring has significantly raised the rate of compliance in the industry. The rate of compliance rose 20 percent between 1994 and 1996, in part due to the proliferation of monitoring. In 1998, DOL statistics indicate that the rate of violations in non-monitored shops is twice as high as in monitored ones. However, the data also demonstrate that while monitoring helps, it has far from solved industry’s problems. Fifty-six percent of monitored shops are still violating labor laws.

Many of the initiatives described above are still too new to evaluate fully. The FLA has only recently begun its external monitoring program. The FLA has, however, established a complaint response system and is developing remediation strategies when problems are identified. For instance, in response to a third-party complaint submitted by Nike, the FLA sent a team to the Dominican Republic to assess a labor dispute at the BJ&B cap factory in January 2002. Workers alleged freedom of association violations when 20 workers were fired from the facility after having signed a petition to form a union. Within 24 hours of receiving the complaint, FLA compliance staff were on location and conducted unannounced factory visits, offsite interviews with workers, and a review of facility payroll, personnel, and timecard records. WRC staff also participated in this inspection. The dispute was resolved within several weeks.

As noted above, SAI has certified 236 factories to meet the SA8000 standard. SAI staff assert that member companies have conducted more than 2,000 audits of supplier factories in preparation for these certifica-

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

tions. SAI has also conducted a number of auditor, supplier, and worker trainings around the world. To date, more than 1,100 people in 19 countries have taken SAI’s supplier training course. SAI is also working with the International Textile, Garment, and Leather Workers Federation to support workers in 12 countries across Latin America, Africa, and Asia on increasing worker involvement in workplace standards and monitoring systems. Transparency remains, however, a major issue in the evaluation of such systems.

There are obviously a number of weaknesses and challenges to making these different monitoring and reporting systems effective. Nongovernmental monitoring faces many of the same mundane challenges as traditional government monitoring and enforcement, including coverage, training and capacity of inspectors, incentives of monitors, corruption, etc. The long and mobile nature of apparel supply chains, which has strained traditional monitoring, also makes nongovernmental monitoring extremely challenging. The Gap alone receives goods from 4,000 factories in 55 countries, the number for Disney is estimated at more than 30,000 factories, and Wal-Mart from even more (Wach and Nadvi, 2000).

The ability of firms to move production quickly among factories and to hide behind multiple layers of ownership make systematic inspections extremely difficult.18 A number of critics have raised concerns that nongovernmental factory visits are too infrequent to evaluate normal day-to-day operations. “Parachuting” monitors are able to identify the most obvious problems but may miss many of the largest issues and are not around long enough to actually solve problems (O’Rourke, 2002). Critics surmise, quite reasonably, that NGOs will not be able to duplicate national labor inspectorates as they cannot provide full coverage for all factories (Justice, 2001).

There are also concerns about how many workers these systems can actually reach. Many markets—such as informal-sector production, business-to-business commodities, and production for domestic consumption in developing countries—lack consumers who focus on social responsibility issues. As Pearson and Seyfang (2002) have argued, voluntary codes and monitoring primarily influence “enclaves” in the global economy rather than applying universally. Nongovernmental systems focus on workers in

18  

One ETI firm commented, “I can know my supply chain at 9 a.m., then by 10 a.m. it’s all different” (Ethical Trading Initiative, 2001, p. 7).

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

first-tier suppliers and often at large-scale factories. They rarely reach down to informal-sector or home-based workers (Lee, 1997; Brill and Tate, 2002). Nonetheless, these systems do appear to reach workers that are currently not being served by traditional labor regulation.

Codes and monitoring also entail fairly complex technical and social issues. Consulting and accounting firms and NGOs need extensive training to adequately play the role of industrial hygienists or experts on wages and hours. Counting on private actors or NGOs to provide these skills assumes that they, or the firms being monitored, will assume the cost of training and conducting rigorous inspections.

Even if nongovernmental monitoring can overcome these critical implementation challenges, a number of deeper concerns remain. Critics fear that nongovernmental monitoring will provide public relations cover to brands, may confuse consumers with a proliferation of labels and claims, and may have unintended negative effects on workers in developing countries (Liubicic, 1998). Another critical concern is that nongovernmental monitoring may be helping to privatize governmental monitoring. Some critics warn that companies are controlling these processes, coopting NGOs by changing them from watchdogs to “partners,” and undermining strong local laws and unions (Justice, 2001, p. 6). Having NGOs play the role of regulators may also ultimately undermine traditional regulatory processes (Nadvi and Wältring, 2001; International Labour Organization, 1998). Others fear that elected governments are actually ceding some of their sovereignty to consumers through these systems. Clearly the shift to nongovernmental monitoring focuses more attention on consumers (rather than the state or unions) as the key constituent of monitoring and enforcement.

Some critics also argue that monitoring, when it is conducted by local NGOs, can impede unionization or otherwise crowd out the efforts of local workers’ organizations. Compa (2001, p. 30) discusses several cases in Central America where NGOs appear to be “supplanting the unions’ role as worker representatives by discussing wages and working conditions with factory managers,” a process that will actually help “powerful companies to avoid union organizing, enforceable collective agreements, and government monitoring.” Others in Central America disagree with this assessment, arguing that NGO monitoring has supported union campaigns in El Salvador and Guatemala (Quinteros, 2001). The Kukdong case in Mexico highlights the potential of a coordinated union-NGO, north-south strategy. Cooperation between local workers, the AFL-CIO, NGOs, student activists, the FLA, and the WRC supported the formation of an independent

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
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union, the signing of a new contract with Korean management, and important gains in pay and health and safety conditions (Brown, 2001). The spotlight of monitoring was useful in this case to protect fledgling union organizing. Nonetheless, the debate in Central America underscores the reality that NGOs and unions continue to be wary allies and need to develop (Compa, 2001).

A number of critics have also noted that codes and monitoring can hurt workers (Esbenshade, 2001; Liubicic, 1998). Monitoring reports can lead firms to cut contracts with poorly performing factories, leading to job losses. Firms may reduce overtime at a factory to comply with a code of conduct, despite workers’ needing these wages to survive. Workers may also be punished after complaining to auditors, as these systems often have limited protections for workers who complain. Even when monitoring is effective, some of the most hazardous jobs may be shifted further down the supply chain or into the informal sector to avoid the selective gaze of nongovernmental monitoring.

There are also many problematic versions of nongovernmental monitoring. For example, in one recent evaluation, Global Social Compliance (formerly PricewaterhouseCoopers), a monitor for many large multinational corporations, was shown to depend largely on data provided by management and to conduct very cursory inspections of factories (O’Rourke, 2002). Worker interviews were conducted inside factories, so factory managers knew who was being interviewed, for how long, and on what issues. This kind of monitoring can miss major issues in a factory, provide a false impression of performance, certify that a company is “sweat-free” on the basis of very limited evidence, and actually disempower the workers it is meant to help. While there is no single perfect way to monitor a factory, there are clearly better and worse monitoring practices.

CONCLUSIONS

Despite a number of problems and challenges, new nongovernmental monitoring systems have the potential to generate valuable information for the evaluation of compliance with international labor standards. As these systems are focused primarily on factory- and brand-level evaluations, they offer potentially very detailed information on the context of manufacturing practices in a particular country, providing ground-level information to complement national-level data on labor standards performance. Since these systems now generally only analyze the suppliers of western brands

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

and retailers, they generate information that might be considered “best practices” in developing countries. All of these types of information can be useful and complementary for broader national assessments of compliance with labor standards.

Questions remain, however, on how to move these systems towards more credible and complete global coverage. Can these systems be implemented beyond the first tier of suppliers? Can improved practices “spill over” into firms not directly tied to high-end global supply chains? Can southern stakeholders be brought into discussions and have a real say in the structure and implementation of these programs? Can mechanisms of representation and democracy be formalized in these nongovernmental systems? Can these systems provide workers and their advocates real tools that will increase their ability to organize? Is it possible to move toward interoperable systems of standards and monitoring? Can the ILO be brought more fully into nongovernmental monitoring? And ultimately, can these new forms of monitoring be designed to complement and support existing regulatory processes?

In some regards, past distinctions between official and unofficial systems are beginning to break down. There is some convergence under way in codes and monitoring regimens that is blurring the boxes presented in this chapter. Factory monitoring sometimes includes union officials. Supply-chain monitoring is using NGOs to monitor factories. And NGO investigations are sometimes coordinated with powerful brands. Nonetheless, there are still critical distinctions among these systems on such issues as the roles of workers and advocacy organizations, transparency of results, and strategies for remediation of problems.

And there is certainly no guarantee that voluntary codes of conduct and monitoring schemes will naturally converge on more complete or democratic systems of monitoring and reporting. They are just as likely to diverge into a plethora of competing initiatives, serving to only confuse the public and undermine the credibility of nongovernmental initiatives. However, with strategic policies and coordinated efforts, nongovernmental monitoring could instead move toward more credible, transparent, and accountable systems. And this monitoring and reporting could be designed to complement existing government data.

One promising avenue would involve efforts to increase transparency among these systems, in order to learn more about conditions in factories around the world and more about monitoring methods and certification processes. This approach would also facilitate better comparison across pro-

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
×

grams. The different models of nongovernmental monitoring are effective at different processes. Factory monitoring identifies willing factories and gives managers information to support change. Supply-chain monitoring helps move standards to outsourced chains of production and provides brands with information to better manage their suppliers. Independent investigations help to expose the worst actors, provide information to workers, and create incentives for brands to prevent problems in their contractors. Connecting these different types of information in some comparable way might help to overcome the challenges of access, scope, and credibility of nongovernmental monitoring.

Several new initiatives are currently being developed that might respond to this challenge. A coalition of NGOs in Europe and Australia (led by the Clean Clothes Campaign and Oxfam-Aid Abroad) are developing a comparison and rating system (which they call the “Human Rights Marathon”) that would evaluate and compare firm performance and monitoring systems. Monitoring systems that are more transparent would receive higher ratings. In the United States, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights is working to develop a public comparison system for labor performance, modeled at least in part on the environmental comparison website.19 Both of these initiatives would advance transparency and comparability of codes and monitoring programs.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Each of the existing nongovernmental regulatory monitoring systems has weaknesses and challenges. Nonetheless, under certain conditions, nongovernmental monitoring can influence factory labor practices. With increased transparency, improved technical capacities, and new mechanisms of accountability to workers and consumers, nongovernmental monitoring could complement existing state regulatory systems. As they develop, nongovernmental regulatory systems should be evaluated along a number of criteria:

  • legitimacy—Are key stakeholders involved in all stages of standard setting, monitoring, and enforcement?

19  

See http://www.scorecard.org [October 16, 2003].

Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
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  • rigor—Do codes of conduct meet or exceed ILO conventions and local laws? Are standards measurable? Is monitoring technically competent?

  • accountability—Is monitoring independent and transparent?

  • complementarity—Do nongovernmental regulatory systems support state monitoring and processes to learn and improve standards and monitoring methods?

Regulation in the global economy remains a daunting challenge. If these experiments in nongovernmental monitoring can be made more transparent, accountable, and democratic, it may be possible to build them into an important complement to existing labor regulation. At a minimum, nongovernmental monitoring and reporting offers a glimpse of emerging strategies to monitor global supply chains and to begin the process of building new systems for a fast-changing world.

3-1 The committee recommends that nongovernmental monitoring organizations—including internal corporate systems and external systems operated by NGOs or other organizations—work together to develop transparent methodologies and measures of performance that allow comparison.

3-2 The committee recommends that external monitoring organizations make their data, auditing methods, and findings public.

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Suggested Citation:"3 Information from Nongovernmental Labor Monitoring Systems." National Research Council. 2004. Monitoring International Labor Standards: Techniques and Sources of Information. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/10937.
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This new report provides a framework within which to assess compliance with core international labor standards and succeeds in taking an enormous step toward interpreting all relevant information into one central database. At the request of the Bureau of International Labor Affairs at the U.S. Department of Labor, the National Research Council’s Committee on Monitoring International Labor Standards was charged with identifying relevant and useful sources of country-level data, assessing the quality of such data, identifying innovative measures to monitor compliance, exploring the relationship between labor standards and human capital, and making recommendations on reporting procedures to monitor compliance. The result of the committee’s work is in two parts—this report and a database structure. Together, they offer a first step toward the goal of providing an empirical foundation to monitor compliance with core labor standards. The report provides a comprehensive review of extant data sources, with emphasis on their relevance to defined labor standards, their utility to decision makers in charge of assessing or monitoring compliance, and the cautions necessary to understand and use the quantitative information.

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