Here is the response from French Connection – they responded within a matter of days to my letter.
In response to your enquiry I wanted to let you know that we work very closely with all our suppliers and factories and provide them with a code of conduct to ensure that the materials they use adhere to our standards. We recognise our responsibility towards the workers employed in factories, manufacturing products on our behalf and work closely with our suppliers to set standards by which they must operate, these are policed during regular visits to factories. Within our code of conduct we confirm that suppliers provide working conditions for its workers which are safe and which exceed the minimum legal standards for the country in question, do not employ workers who are below the applicable legal working age, pay their workers fair renumeration for the work required of them and in any event, above any legally imposed minimum wage, maintain good standards of comfort and hygiene and adhere to safe and environmentally friendly working practices.
We are not currently members of the ETI although we are in the process of reviewing and updating our policies, procedures and standards to ensure they are up-to-date with current guidance. We also intend to publish our policies and standards on completion of the review.
We are currently also looking into ways to make the business more environmentally friendly, this has been initiated by the use of recycled wooden clothes hangars in store, paper rather than plastic bags in all our stores, recycled cartons for transporting our clothes to our stores which are reused and not discarded, as well as reducing plastic packaging in our deliveries.
