What we want

Friday, 07 April 2006 09:10

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LBL believes that everyone with a stake in the garment industry has a responsibility to improve working conditions. Workers to join together and demand better rights, consumers to take ethics into account in the way that they shop and to enter into dialogue with companies, governments to step in and defend workers' rights through legislation, and finally companies, especially the big brands at the top of the supply chain.

While all the mainstream clothing companies have a long way to go, some have begun to improve working conditions in their supply chains. What we ask of all companies is that they:

  1. Accept their responsibility for working conditions in all the factories producing their products.
  2. Adopt a code of conduct that sets out workers’ basic rights to earn a living wage, work freely and without discrimination, and defend these rights by joining a trade union .
  3. Prove that the code is being implemented in their factories using credible, independent verification.
  4. Work with factories where working conditions aren’t up to scratch, rather than pulling out of them.
  5. Work with trade unions and labour rights groups on the ground to achieve all this.
  6. Make sure that their purchasing practices don’t get in the way of attempts to guarantee workers’ rights.