Stitching for South Africa: taking responsibility for working conditions in garment supply chains for South African retailers

Are South African retailers following good labour practices? By: Aacoly, N
Published by: Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO), 2007
Via: Eldis

This report explores the labour standards and corporates social responsibility (CSR) codes of South African garment retailers. Short profiles of several South African retailers are presented, along with available information on their CSR policies and practices. The report gives examples of some suppliers in countries including: Swaziland, Lesotho, South Africa and China. The report makes the following findings:

• garment workers in Swaziland make a better than average wage, yet they live in poverty, are unable to pay education fees for their children, are subject to forced overtime and their factories have not undergone social audits
  
• Lesotho is the the largest Sub-Saharan garment producer to the United States. Garment workers are subject to long working hours, unpaid or forced overtime, violations of health and safety standards, illegal dismissals, and low wages.
• South African garment workers have been hit by large job losses in the sector, informal workers are often employed by suppliers
• the majority of garment workers in China are women who are paid low wages, forced to work long hours, lack written contracts and are not entitled to various forms of social assistance.
  

The paper makes a number of all recommendations for the South African garment retail industry including:

• implement good codes of conduct througout supply chains
• ensure implementaiton of codes to all levels including informal workers
• if informed about rights violations, do not cut contracts from the supplier but work to improve standards
• develop sector-wide approaches to the problem.
  

(http://www.somo.nl/html/paginas/pdf/stitching_for_africa_jan_2007_NL.pdf)