Ergon Update July 2011
Climbing the wage ladder
Code-bound organisations and multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) are increasingly emphasising activities that encourage payment of higher wages above and beyond legal minima. Stuart Bell blogs on some of the tougher commitments to living wages by the Fair Labor Association and SA8000, and also the increasing use of wage ladders as a tool for assessing existing wage levels.
Read Stuart's blog here.
Ruggie Principles podcast
Steve Gibbons features on a podcast about the Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights along with Caroline Rees from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government . The podcast, produced by the legal training and information company CPDcast.com is normally available to subscribers, but can be listened to or downloaded for free if you register using the the promotional code ‘ergon2011’. The podcast looks at the background to the Principles and the implications for business policies and processes.
Research on tea industry wages
As part of ongoing work, co-ordinated by Oxfam Novib, into wages in the tea industry Ergon is managing recruitment of local research partners in India (Assam), Indonesia and Malawi to undertake field research and stakeholder engagement at national and estate level. This builds on extensive background research conducted by Ergon. Funding is being provided by the Dutch Sustainable Trade Initiative (IDH), Ethical Tea Partnership and Unilever. The project aims to build a greater understanding of wages in the tea sectors in the three focus countries, including through using wage ladders, in order to create a partnership of stakeholders across the tea industry with a common concern to ensure wages for workers are adequate for sustainable livelihoods. Ergon's input is being co-ordinated by Pins Brown and Alastair Usher. Full details are here.
Freedom of association and development
Ergon’s Labour Rights Director, Steve Gibbons, has just returned from facilitating an ILO-organised workshop in Johannesburg focussed on identifying and communicating the development benefits of freedom of association. The workshop followed on from work which Steve and Kirsten Newitt carried out in 2010 and which is about to be published by the ILO. The South Africa workshop was attended by participants from a range of African countries and concentrated on the challenges for freedom of association in the region and also on developing arguments and case studies demonstrating the practical linkages between freedom of association and positive development impacts. Ergon provided expert assistance in the meeting design, pre-workshop preparation, post-workshop follow-up and facilitated both days of the meeting.
OECD guidelines: new and improved?
Stuart Bell has posted a blog on the new version of the OECD’s Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, agreed at the end of May, which contains some important new clauses and represents a closer alignment with other international instruments on CSR. The most obvious new inclusion is a specific section on human rights which closely follows the UN Framework for Business and Human Rights (the ‘Ruggie Principles’). Stuart's blog looksat the changes to the employment clauses of the Guidelines. Read more here
GSCP equivalence process launched
The Global Social Compliance Programme (GSCP), which brings together major global brands and retailers, has launched its 'equivalence process', a tool by which a social compliance scheme and/or an environmental compliance scheme can be benchmarked against the GSCP's Reference Tools. It is intended that the process will assist in standardising company codes of conduct, internal social compliance programmes and labour audit protocols. The process comprises two steps: self-assessment against the GSCP Reference Tools, and review and validation of the self-assessment by independent experts. GSCP is also looking for experts to perform equivalence assessments. Click here for more details
New face at Ergon
We are pleased to welcome Brett Dodge to the Ergon team. Brett has joined us from Maplecroft. He previously worked at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and Interrights. He has degrees from the Universities of Essex and North Carolina.
