Rebekah has made an interesting discovery. The Ethical Trading Action Group (ETAG) has released an 88-page study, Coming Clean on the Clothes We Wear: Transparency Report Card. If you, like me, don’t have time to read 88 pages, here’s the one-page Coles Notes (PDF). I’m kind of surprised by the results. As Becky notes:
It ranks both Nike (69%) and Gap (68%) above MEC (58%) in terms of labor rights issues. Color me shocked! Here’s another shocker — Walmart (30%) ranks above Roots (24%), and Sears and Le Chateau pull up the rear at 5 and 0%, respectively. Well, maybe that’s not so shocking after all.
I assume that the 5% at Sears refers to my underwear of choice, manufactured in Truro, Nova Scotia.
I always felt so totally confident shopping at MEC. I’d be curious to here these companies respond to this report.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Radio-Canada just aired a news story about child labor being used in the Bangladesh factories that make the clothes for Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart claims to have ended all business with them (after seeing the report) but didn’t do anything to help the kids, I think.
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/societe/2005/11/30/005-enquete-zonelibre.shtml
cctgsifr
If a company fails to respond to their request for information, they rate the company a zero. I don’t think that methodology is very sound. If you look at the full document, they rated five basic criteria: “Governance and Risk Management”, “Code for Labor Standards in the Supply Chain”, “Stakeholder Engagement”, “Management” and “Auditing and Reporting”. Only one of these directly affects the lives of workers, the rest are bureaucracy. For example, La Senza, with — according to them — the strongest labor standards code, scores only 22. I don’t know if this is cause to dismiss their rankings, but it something to think about. Last time I shopped at Le Chateau, which was four or five years ago, I recall that a lot of their stuff was made in Canada.
I imagine the response from retailers to this report will be determined by whether or not this is a priority issue for them. As the Social and Environmental Manager at MEC, its my job to ensure our business practices reflect our values so folks like you can continue to feel good about shopping at MEC.
ETAG Retail Report Card has done a pretty good job at ranking North American brands and retailers. It has helped us at MEC to see where our systems are strong and where our efforts can improve. While it may surprise many that MEC was only ranked #5, it wasn’t to us. We’re always referred to as ‘the little retailer that could’ but we also know that we’re the little retailer that could do better. When it comes to human rights, we can all do better.
We have a small, but deeply embedded program of auditing our factories and following up to remediate issues we find (we have employees in our production, buying and sustainability departments that work to ensure our factories meet our expectations). That said, we haven’t been as strong as the other brands in our reporting efforts and while we have a Board of Directors endorsed policy and strategy, we haven’t made that explicit in our communications.
In part our philosophy has always been – do the work – don’t just talk about doing the work. But we’re realizing that communicating about what you’re doing isn’t simply about tooting your own horn, but about showing leadership and joining other leaders to create a path that others can follow.
This month we hired a Social Compliance Manager to oversee the program and work with the team of 3-4 folks that currently work on this issue for MEC and we’re pretty excited to crank it up a notch with the new capacity.
The ETAG methodology does look at the ‘bureaucratic systems’ and not on the ground issues at the factory level – but it is a good litmus test of whether a company has the commitment, senior management support and resources to deliver on their promise. If you’re interested in detailed reports on the factories themselves check out the Fair Labor Associations annual reports – (specifically the tracking reports) at http://www.fairlabor.org[1]. MEC recently joined the FLA and as a condition of membership will also be reporting factory tracking charts on the FLA site within the next year and a half.
While I don’t know much about Liz Claiborne, I think Nike, the Gap and Levis deserve to be at the top of the list. Whether it was response to getting hammered in the media or some moral imperative (does it matter if they are actually driving change?)… they have all responded with strong programs that are working not just to document the issues but to do on-the-ground work in the countries they do business… things like worker rights education programs and setting up health and safety committees.
While we’re proud to be Canada’s leading retailer in the report, we know we can do better and we know we can better communicate what we’re doing well. And, yes, we also think it is kind of lame that no Canadian retailer is in the top 3. We plan to change that and reports like this from leaders in the human rights movement will help us.