Human Rights Watch (HRW) has demanded that German apparel and footwear brands should promote workers’ rights in their global operations by publicly disclosing names of factories producing their products.
“Supply chain transparency through public disclosure would demonstrate a brand’s commitment to ensuring good working conditions for workers throughout their operations,” HRW said in a press release.
“German clothing brands should promote respect for worker rights and safety by making their global supply chains transparent,” said Wenzel Michalski, Germany director at Human Rights Watch.
He added, “Adidas, a leading German brand, has been publicly disclosing its supplier list since 2007 – demonstrating that transparency is both possible and desirable.”
In a recent report, ‘Work Faster or Get Out: Labor Rights Abuses in Cambodia’s Garment Industry’, HRW documented lax enforcement of Cambodian labour laws and need for brands to improve compliance.
For the report, the agency examined labour practices in factories producing products for Adidas, Armani, Gap, H&M, Joe Fresh, and Marks and Spencer, among others.
“Many factories in Cambodia repeatedly issued short-term contracts beyond the two-year limit to avoid paying workers maternity and other benefits, and to intimidate and control them,” it said.
Workers on short-term contracts who tried to form unions or assert their rights were especially at risk of not having their contracts renewed.
“Many apparel brands have not taken adequate steps to end this illegal use of short-term contracts in their Cambodian supplier factories, even where their supplier codes of conduct have clauses limiting their use,” the report informed.
“By publicly disclosing names of suppliers, garment brands enable public scrutiny of their supply chains, in turn helping alert brands to poor working conditions in their supplier factories,” HWR added.
“Such transparency also allows brings to light, whether factories are authorised or not authorised to produce clothes for a particular brand,” it observed.
Suppliers to brands sometimes subcontract their work to other factories that subject workers to dangerous or abusive conditions without authorisation and without the brands’ knowledge.
“Supply chain transparency helps monitoring group’s alert brands to these situations so they can be addressed,” HRW noted.
According to HRW, lack of transparency was evident following the collapse of the Rana Plaza complex in Bangladesh, which housed garment factories, killing more than 1,100 workers and injuring thousands more.
Unions and labour rights groups gathered brand labels produced in the destroyed factories from the rubble, and demanded that those brands contribute to the compensation fund for the victims.
