Annual External Compliance Report of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s Workers’ Welfare Standards | Changing the game: towards real impacts for workers (2018)

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Annual External Compliance Report of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy’s Workers’ Welfare Standards | Strong foundations: the journey to improving worker welfare (2017)

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C&A Foundation: From Boycott to Boom? A Socio-Environmental Map of Myanmar's Garment Industry in 2016

Summary

C&A Foundation commissioned Impactt to conduct a scoping study on social and environmental programmes in the garment sector in Myanmar.

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Nicer Work? Impactt’s Benefits for Business and Workers Programme 2011-2013

Summary

Impactt has published the full results of our Benefits for Business and Workers programme which has been rolled out to 73 factories, employing 102,110 workers, with the support of Arcadia Group, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, New Look, Ralph Lauren, Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Varner Group and the RAGS Fund of the British Department for International Development.

The report shows that the programme has made real strides in delivering better businesses able to support better jobs, putting more than US$6.6 million dollars into workers’ pockets over 12 months, halving worker turnover in Bangladesh and reducing it by a quarter in India. All of this supported by significant quality and productivity gains, with a 6-month ROI for suppliers of between 13 and 21.

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Nice Work? Are Workers Taking the Strain in the Economic Downturn?

An update of Impactt’s data on the prevalence of labour standards issues from 2006-2012

Summary

Based on a data set of 678 production sites and 17,500 workers in the apparel, electronics, toys, homewares and food industries, our report highlights how workers continue to pay the price of the global financial crisis. The level of worker exploitation has increased over the last 6 years with people working harder, for wages which can buy them less of what they need, without the ability to bargain for more.

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Finding the Sweet Spot: Smarter Ethical Trade That Delivers More For All

Summary

Over the last 15 years we have seen brands and purchasers valiantly try to cajole, persuade, regulate and instruct their suppliers and sub-contractors to comply with local law and international standards on decent work. However none of these have made a noticeable dent in the systematic abuse of workers’ rights in global supply chains.

Impactt’s work indicates that the key is to find the sweet spot, where the interests of the purchaser, supplier and worker intersect. Understanding worker perspectives and developing motivating packages of benefits are the vital first steps. Entrepreneurs and employers around the world are increasingly eager to identify this sweet spot – how to compete in an increasingly uncertain world by harnessing the power of the workforces to produce better products more efficiently.

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Getting Smarter: Ethical Trading in the Downturn

Report authors: Rosey Hurst, Dr Martin Buttle, Michelle Lehrer and Jonathan Sanders

Summary

High energy prices, food inflation, financial turmoil, recession and consumers tightening their belts – 2008 proved to be a challenging year.  The situation poses obvious but important questions for companies: how should they tackle the challenges of ethical trade and labour standards in a downturn?  Is work on upholding labour standards an optional extra to be discarded when times are hard?  Or have ethical issues moved to a point where they are considered core to operations?

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Progress not Perfection: 10 Years of Making an Impactt

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Changing Over Time: Tackling supply chain labour issues through business practice

The Impactt Overtime Project

Summary

A report on a collaborative project in China to reduce excessive overtime by improving factory productivity, human resource management and communication.

This publication gives convincing evidence that a new approach to tackling labour standards issues, focused on change over time rather than strict compliance, can have a positive impact on even the most intractable problems. It tells the story of a collaborative project in China which aimed to reduce excessive overtime without reducing wages, through building the factories’ own capacity to improve productivity, human resource management and internal communication. The lessons learnt from this project can be applied to a wide range of sectors and countries.

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