I have not written my own letter to Primark yet, but I have sent several e-mails generated by other organisations (such as Labour behind the Label) to them and signed petitions. I recently received this lenthy response from Primark which I give here – I would no doubt receive a similar response were I to send my own letter.
Primark notes the concerns expressed by Labour behind the Label and its supporters and wishes to share the following information about its ethical trade programme. Further information is available at: www.primark.co.uk/ethical
- Auditing is still accepted as the cornerstone of any programme for monitoring labour practices in supply chains. Last year Primark conducted 567 audits, almost twice as many as the year before. Our targets for 2009 are even more ambitious; we plan to audit and engage in follow up with factories working for all the top 250 suppliers (extending from top 100 suppliers in 2008). This will cover 87% of our suppliers by expenditure, and involve over 1,000 audits.
- Our auditing priorities are driven by five main factors: Level of turnover with a supplier; proportion of a supplier’s production that is dedicated to our business; country of manufacture; production process; any other information about a particular supplier or factory that identifies risk.
- However, we realise that auditing is only part of the solution to improving standards in our supply chain. We acknowledge that many of our suppliers will not be able to meet our expectations without more training and support. Our own growing team of ethical trade staff in country focus on supplier capacity building, training them to monitor and then raise standards not just in their own manufacturing facilities but in their own suppliers’.
- Primark has conducted dedicated ethical trade workshops with its suppliers in India and will do the same in the UK and China within the next four months. Further workshops are planned for Turkey and Bangladesh. We will be developing a guidance document for suppliers on implementing our Code of Conduct, giving them practical advice and examples on how to make changes within their operations. A further set of tools is being developed and will be made available on a suppliers’ ethical trade extranet which we aim to launch later this year.
- A major requirement for the success of code implementation is complete transparency of our suppliers’ full supply chains, including all sub-contractors and particularly home-working networks. Primark acknowledges that properly conducted and controlled home-working brings economic benefit to a wider section of the local community. However, we continue to believe that unauthorised and unmonitored sub-contracting is detrimental to workers’ interests. In 2009 we have ambitious plans to map the degree of homeworking in our supply chain, focusing on the top 150 suppliers.
- Primark is tracking how the right to freedom of association is protected and upheld in its supply chain and accepts that worker representation is an area that requires further attention. We understand that encouraging workers to represent themselves is one of the most sustainable ways to raise standards in the supply chain. Primark is already partnering with workers rights organisations in India and Bangladesh and is exploring related initiatives in China. As part of an NGO project in India we are specifically looking at ways to increase workers’ knowledge and membership of unions.
- Primark is committed to ensuring that people in its supply chain are paid fairly for the work they do. We monitor adherence to wage laws and standards through aur auditing programme. However, we believe that this is a complex issue; simply increasing productivity in a factory or paying more for an order does not guarantee that workers see the benefit. Concern over wages is something we have in commen with other brands with whom we share more than 95% of our contracted factories. Through our membership of organisations like the Ethical Trading Initiative we are working together with other brands, NGOs and trade unions on finding sustainable solutions to wages challenges.
- We share with our competitors many of the challenges contronting any retailer with a global supply chain. We do not always get things right, nor do we have all the answers. However, we are firmly committed to improving the ethical performance of our business and that of our suppliers and their factories. In the search for solutions to common problems we are keen to work with other parties, including other brands.
- In order to give greater visibility to the work Primark is doing in this area, we have launched a new website with a dedicated ethical trading section where our activities, progress to date and targets on ethical trade are recorded. We will keep updating this website as our programme develops
I have to admit, that Primark certainly seem to understand the issues facing them and have a plan to change them. My only hope is that this is not just a response produced by their PR department and is in fact a genuine commitment from senior management to make their workers lives better. I hope they can live up to their own hype.
