Report from Impactt
April 22, 2009 by amucklow
Impactt have released an new report – Getting Smarter: Ethical Trading in the Downturn
Impactt has been working in ethical trade for 10 years, enabling companies to improve working conditions in their supply chains in a way that brings clear business benefits to both ends of the chain. Impactt’s approach is change-focused, innovative and practical.
The report focuses on how the recessions and all that entails meant that 2008 was a challenging year. The situation poses obvious but important questions for companies: how should they tackle the challenges of ethical trade and labour standards in a downturn? Is work on upholding labour standards an optional extra to be discarded when times are hard? Or have ethical issues moved to a point where they are considered core to operations?
Impactt strives to find creative ways to improve working conditions in supply chains to bring clear business benefits; we have developed case studies on 4 key projects from the year that do just that:
- Bangladesh Ethical Factory: A model for sustainably increasing wages and reducing working hours.
- Practical Child Labour Solutions: Building consensus on effective child labour remediation – getting working children back to school.
- Building Local Capacity: Expanding the capacity of local organisations to work with employers and employees to improve labour practices.
- Better Buying: Integrating ethical trade into the core operations of business.
The report also presents the findings from Impactt’s assessments of 98 production sites during the year to August 2008, which draws on testimony from 1,500 workers in 11 countries.
To download the report click here.
