- Title
- The Ethical Trading Initiative: negotiated solutions to human rights violations in global supply chains?
- Creator
- Connor, Tim; Delaney, Annie; Rennie, Sarah
- Relation
- Non-Judicial Redress Mechanisms Report Series 18
- Relation
- http://corporateaccountabilityresearch.net/njm-report-xviii-eti
- Publisher
- Corporate Accountabilty Research
- Resource Type
- report
- Date
- 2016
- Description
- The Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is a UK-based multi-stakeholder initiative involving companies, trade unions and NGOs that focuses on improving working conditions within business supply chains. The ETI’s membership includes well-known companies such as Asda, Burberry, C&A, Gap, Inditex, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, Sainsbury's and Tesco. The ETI’s governance structure is tripartite, involving equal representation on the ETI Board by NGO representatives, trade union representatives, and member companies. The ETI has a number of processes for responding to alleged breaches of the human rights set out in its code of conduct (the ETI Base Code). Our research indicated that, with some notable exceptions, these processes have demonstrated very limited effectiveness in facilitating effective redress in cases of ongoing human rights violations. The positive exceptions fall into two categories. First, on several occasions the ETI has responded to evidence of rights violations by helping to coordinate successful advocacy for legislative reform in the UK. Arguably such advocacy should be a higher priority for the ETI in producer countries as well as in the UK. Second, in the unusual circumstance where significant and sustained media coverage of a particular rights violation generates a major threat to the reputations of ETI member companies (such as the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh), the ETI can play a valuable role in facilitating important initiatives to address that human rights issue (such the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh). Such exceptions aside, why has the ETI had such limited success in rectifying violations of the human rights set out in the ETI Base Code? It is important to note that there are complicated and highly unbalanced power relationships in each of the various spheres that the ETI must influence in order to facilitate effective redress. These spheres include the power relationships between workers and employers in low-skilled industries; the power relationships between ETI member companies and their first tier suppliers (and other suppliers further down the supply chain); and the power relationships between corporations (including ETI member companies and their suppliers) and state institutions in various countries. There are also complex and unbalanced power relationships within the ETI itself. While there is considerable variation in the extent to which ETI member companies are actively pursuing compliance with the ETI Base Code, our research indicated that even among the more progressive ETI member companies the primary motivation for participating in the ETI is to protect and enhance their reputations with consumers and investors. While there is potential for overlap between this corporate agenda and ETI civil society groups’ goal of human rights redress, that overlap is not automatic. In the absence of a significant reputational threat it can be in the best interests of ETI companies to continually delay any agreement on how to respond to a human rights grievance and to water down the final agreement so it falls well short of full respect for the rights in the ETI Base Code. Further, arguably just by joining the ETI a company acquires a valuable shield against public criticism of its labour practices, since it can claim that it is working with well-respected civil society organisations to address human rights issues. This creates the risk that the ETI could undermine, rather than increase, pressure on companies to cooperate in ensuring that human rights grievances are properly addressed. Our ETI mechanism report makes a number of recommendations for reform of the ETI. Importantly, a number of those recommendations are very similar to commitments in the ETI’s current five year plan, although details of how and to what extent they will be implemented remain limited. The report also highlights factors external to the ETI that are currently undermining its effectiveness.
- Subject
- Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI); human rights; global supply chains
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1325042
- Identifier
- uon:25172
- Rights
- © 2016 Tim Connor, Annie Delaney and Sarah Rennie. The Ethical Trading Initiative: Negotiated solutions to human rights violations in global supply chains? is published under an unported Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial share alike (CC-BY-NC-sa) licence, details of which can be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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