Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER September 19, 2016 32 FEATURES CONNECTING YOU TO YOUR LEGAL COMMUNITY New Edition Spiralbound • August 2016 $46.50* • L7798-5930 ISBN 978-0-7798-5930 Multiple copy discounts available *Plus applicable taxes and shipping & handling Stay connected with the 2016-17 Alberta Legal Telephone Directory Order your copy today. Visit www.carswell.com or call 1-800-387-5164 for a 30-day, no risk evaluation Alberta Legal Telephone Directory is all about your legal community connecting you to the lawyers and law offices you need in Alberta, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. Published annually, it keeps you connected with new and updated names, mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and fax numbers each year. 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CSR The rise of consumer power and CSR A social compliance manager explains her role By Samantha Kuchmak W ith more and more c o n s u m e r s a s k - i n g w h e r e t h e i r clothes come from and how they're made, clothing retail- ers around the world are taking positive steps to ensure their global sourcing practices are socially and environmentally responsible. It's a positive step in the retail clothing industry, resulting in greater accountability and trans- parency and improvements in global working conditions. As social compliance manager for MEC (Mountain Equipment Co-op), the Vancouver-based out- door retailer, I travel to countries all over the world including India, Thailand, Cambodia, Taiwan, China, Vietnam and the United States where our company works with factories manufacturing MEC-branded product. Working closely with the direc- tor of sourcing, our team strives to ensure all finished goods sup- pliers meet or exceed our Supplier Code of Conduct. Our goal is to ensure the clothing and products we produce or source respect the environment and the people who make them. Initiated this year, we are expanding our scope of work to our material suppliers. It's an ongoing and collab- orative process where we work closely with the factories to en- sure local working conditions are ethical, fair and just, with work- ers respected, paid properly and working in safe conditions. Working closely with partners A key component to ensure com- pliance is conducting factory au- dits before we work with a facility partner. Once a factory is nomi- nated by our sourcing and buy- ing experts, we undertake a pre- sourcing audit. Ensuring there are no unacceptable violations such as mandatory overtime, payment below minimum wage or the use of child labour, we give the go- ahead to our sourcing team to be- gin working with the factory, and we continue supporting the fac- tory work through the corrective action plan. MEC's program's standards and policies have been adopted from the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Fair Labor Association (FLA). While we strive to set the bar with high standards, it is important to note we do not operate on a pass or fail program. It's common for fac- tories to have compliance chal- lenges. We recognize this and will work with factories to help them address the challenges and find solutions. Examples might be high over- time hours, lack of a system to ad- dress employee grievances, poor chemical management, improper storage of flammable materials or a lack of personal protective equipment such as ear plugs, goggles and needle guards. Our program encourages continuous improvement with all factory partners. When starting a relationship with a new factory, MEC aims to create long-term partnerships based on open communication, transparency and respect. In sup- port of this, third-party audits are conducted at least once every 18 months, capacity-building pro- grams and training are developed specifically for factory partners, and we collaborate where we can with other brands and retailers. Empowering local communities Close monitoring of factory con- ditions and employee practices is just one part of ensuring respon- sible business practices. My team and I work closely with workers, factory management, govern- ment officials and non-profit organizations such as Fair Trade USA, Better Work and the Fair Labor Association. Together, we strive to empower workers and factories to develop and imple- ment sustainable programs and practices benefiting workers. Over the past five years that I've worked in social responsibil- ity, I've noticed a positive upward shift in how products are sourced and produced. I've seen brands and factories collaborate more, moving towards equal partner- ships. is approach is crucial be- cause it allows everyone to share experiences and learn from each other. It also improves efficiency, al- lowing people to focus their time and energy on capacity-building projects and training. In 2015, 58 per cent of our audits were shared or accepted by other brands and programs such as Fair Trade USA, the FLA and the World Federation of Sporting Goods Industry. Growth in fair trade Aligned with our sustainabil- ity programs at MEC, Fair Trade USA is one of the newer programs we are supporting; growing our offering of MEC products that are fair trade-certified each season for members. When a consumer buys a prod- uct that is fair trade-certified, he is supporting a fresh approach based on a partnership between producers and consumers. It's a market-based approach to help end poverty by ensuring a mini- mum price for products sold; put- ting more money directly into the hands of the farmers and workers who produce the certified items. e rise in certified products such as tea, coffee and fruits and vegetables has ballooned over the past decade. ere are now more than four million fair trade- certified products in the global marketplace. Between 2010 and 2015, Fair Trade USA had certi- fied 24 factories, directly impact- ing more than 20,000 workers. Improving livelihoods A key component of a Fair Trade program is the fair trade premi- um, which ranges from one to 10 per cent of the price of the prod- uct when it leaves the factory. Paid by the company on top of the price of the product, the premium goes directly into a worker-managed bank account. Workers vote on how to use this money to address their most important needs. It could mean financing wom- en's health services or setting up a scholarship fund or daycare for the workers' children. It's a fan- tastic program that has a huge impact on improving the lives of workers and their families. For example, the premiums from the sales of MEC's first fair trade-certified clothing contrib- uted to an account that allowed workers at the Pratibha Syntex factory in India to purchase 2,711 raincoats for the monsoon season in 2014. Seeing these kinds of direct im- pacts and improvements in local communities is one of the most rewarding parts of my job. Social responsibility Over the past several years, I've seen a heightened emphasis of companies' commitment to cor- porate social responsibility (CSR); building sustainability directly into strategic and annual plans. It's simply becoming the new norm on how to do business. It's also becoming a much more complex field requiring an in-depth understanding of labour, health and safety and internation- al development issues. I am learn- ing every day and it's fascinating to find out more about different countries and cultures and their challenges and opportunities. rough the networking I've done attending various confer- ences and trade shows and fac- tories I've visited, I've built a wide and supportive network of con- tacts from other brands and com- panies. I can't tell you how many times I've asked for their support or insight in how they've worked through an issue or developed a program and rolled it out in their supply chain. e mutual support and shar- ing of information and best prac- tices has been fantastic. It rein- forces that all companies, even competitors, have a shared stake in creating a global environment where products are produced responsibly and workers and lo- cal communities are treated with dignity and respect. I am excited to be working in a rapidly evolving industry that respects the power of consumers, the rights of workers and believes in giving back and helping to cre- ate a more sustainable, ethical ap- proach to business. We're only scratching the sur- face of what we can collectively achieve, with a lot of exciting de- velopments set to happen in the decades to come. Samantha Kuchmak is the social com- pliance manager at Mountain Equip- ment Co-op (MEC), a Vancouver- based outdoor retail co-operative. For more information, please contact Tory Nash at tory@nkpr.net. Samantha Kuchmak, social compliance manager at MEC, has seen more companies commiting to corporate social responsibility in the last few years.

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