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sustaInaBlE FashIon : a handBooK For Educators
The ETI’s NGO, trade union and corporate members work
together to identify what constitutes “good practice” in relation
to the implementation of its Base Code, a set of standards
relating to workers’ rights, and then share this good practice.
The following excerpt is from Eco-Chic: The savvy shopper’s
guide to ethical fashion (2007) by Matilda Lee published
by Gaia Thinking (p141 -3): “Now the UK’s biggest
multi-stakeholder initiative, the ETI, established in 1998,
represents [57] companies with a combined annual
turnover of £107 billion. Retailer members include Gap
Inc., Marks & Spencer, Primark, Tesco and Zara. These
companies are brought to the table with trade unions,
development charities and campaigning organisations such
at the TUC, the International Textile Garment and Leather
Workers’ Federation, Oxfam and Christian Aid”.
All companies that join ETI are required to adopt the Base
Code and the accompanying Principles of Implementation,
which they must progressively introduce throughout their
supply chain to ensure that they gradually improve workers’
conditions. The aim is for continual improvements. They are
required to submit a report to the ETI board every year,
detailing their progress.
Verdict: ETI media relations manager Julia Hawkins says,
‘One of the benefits of initiatives like ETI is that companies
can talk openly, honestly among each other and with the trade
unions and NGOs. For companies it offers a sense of not
being alone in trying to effect change’. She says that ETI is
aspirational: ‘The principles are tricky to implement but there
has to be a commitment to the principles.’ An ETI factsheet
says that being a member of the ETI ‘does not necessarily
mean that workers’ rights are fully protected throughout their
supply chain. It does mean that member companies have
made serious commitments to improving conditions over time’.[...] So is ETI a shield or does it result in improvements?
According to Sam Maher of Labour Behind the Label, ‘It
depends on how you look at it. None of the companies can
guarantee that all parts of their supply chain implement the
ETI Base Code. The main issue is that there is no transparency- the reviews, criteria for inclusion and exclusion in ETI are all
confidential, so as a pressure group it is hard to know what
to try and hold them to. What is useful is that when there is
an urgent issue involving a specific violation, it’s much easier
for us to get the companies involved to sit around a table
and discuss the issue – we just ring up ETI and they ask
the companies. Companies like Next are putting work into
improving practices”.
Ethical trading Initiative (EtI)