Apparel quality management

Assignment – 2

Exploration on the various compliance

guidelines existing & then evaluation

Submitted by

Amit raj Kishore

 Compliances
The SA8000 standard is one of the world’s leading social standards used for measuring social compliance and
implementing international labor standards. It was established by a non-governmental, multi-stakeholder
organization named Social Accountability International who strives to eliminate sweatshops by promoting
ethical working conditions, labor rights, corporate social responsibility and social dialogue.

The 9 SA8000 social compliance requirements are:

Child labour: No children younger than 15 years of age may be employed by a factory.

Forced labour: No person may be employed by a factory if they haven’t offered to do so voluntarily or
be forced to work under the threat of punishment or retaliation.

Health and safety: A safe and healthy workplace environment must be provided by the factory who
should also prevent any potential health and safety incidents and work related injury or illness from
occurring.

Freedom of association and collective bargaining: All staff have the right to form, join and organize
trade unions and to bargain collectively on their behalf.

Discrimination: A factory is prohibited from engaging in discrimination in hiring, remuneration, access to

training, promotion, termination or retirement.

Disciplinary practices: A factory is prohibited from engaging in or tolerating the use of corporal
punishment, mental or physical coercion or verbal abuse of employees.

Working hours: A factory must comply with applicable laws, collective bargaining agreements and
industry standards on working hours, breaks and public holidays.

Remuneration: The right of staff to a living wage must be respected by the factory.

Management systems: Compliance must be reviewed and implemented to the SA800 Standard through
developed policies and procedures.

It is essential for garment factories to consider conducting a social compliance audit. A social compliance
audit can be used as a measuring tool for determining a factory’s social compliance standards but is not
a solution for ensuring that social compliance standards are met. Social compliance is difficult to
achieve, but working with a textile management solution provider, minimizes the consequences of not
meeting social compliance standards and helps to establish an improvement plan going forward.

Significance of Compliance in Indian Garment Industry

Compliance is all about the quality of products from the factory which must meet the audits and
inspections and to give a proper environment for working. The demand for compliance is growing
rapidly in today’s business scenario as the buyers from the global markets are insisting on ethically
manufactured products. As the export of garment products from India has increased, the demand for
social compliance has also risen in the Indian garment Industry.

Social Compliance

Social compliance refers to how a business treats its employees, the environment and their perspective
on social responsibility. It refers to a minimal code of conduct that directs how employees are treated
with regards to wages, working hours and work conditions. To ensure that the company meets
standards of various environmental laws, it may be necessary to conduct a compliance audit.

Compliance Audit

Audits and assessments provide vital management control for Process Safety Management, Process
Security Management, and Risk Management Programs. Audits focus on the policies and procedures to
verify compliance with regulatory requirements and industry standards. They help to ensure programs
are properly designed and implemented. Further, audits also identify program deficiencies so that
recommendations can be developed for corrective action.

Compliance audit in India includes an examination of rules, regulations, orders and instructions for their
legality, adequacy, transparency and prudence. Auditors gather information through visual observation
at the site, document reviews and interviews of staff. This data is then compared to the applicable
permits and regulations to evaluate how well the operation is conforming to the applicable legal
requirements.

Phases of Audit

There are three main phases of compliance audit in India:

Pre-audit: It includes planning and organising the audit; establishing the audit objectives, scope and
etiquette; and reviewing the design of the program by inspecting documentation

On-site audit: It includes conducting personnel interviews, reviewing records, and making observations
to assess program implementation

Post-audit: It includes briefing the management on audit findings, and preparing a final report

Therefore, Indian apparel manufacturers need to follow Government guidelines, and social compliance
standards not only within their sphere of operations, but also insist their vendors, distributors, and
other collaborators involved in the supply chain to do the same.

 Core labour standards

 Elimination of Discrimination in Respect of Employment and Occupation
 Freedom of Association
 Right to Collective Bargaining
 Elimination of all Forms of Forced or Compulsory Labour
 Effective Abolition of Child Labour

Apparel industry players would now make sure that labor contractors don’t engage forced or
child labor and get the supply chain of the suppliers audited. Apparel Export Promotion Council
(AEPC), an apex body of Indian apparel exporters, has designed a garment factory compliance
program ‘ Disha ’ (Driving Industry towards Sustainable Human Capital Advancement) to make
India a global benchmark for social compliance in apparel manufacturing and export. This
Common Compliance Code project will prepare the Indian apparel industry on a common
platform towards a more social and environmentally compliant industrial environment.

Compliances in H&M
 LEGAL REQUIREMENTS:-
Our general rule is that all our suppliers and other business partners must, in all their activities,
follow the national laws in the countries in which they operate. Should any requirement in this
Code conflict with the national law in any country or territory, the law must always be followed.
In such cases the supplier must notify H&M immediately, before signing this Code. However,
H&M's requirements may go beyond the requirements set out in national law.
 CHILD LABOUR IS NOT ACCEPTED
 Child Labour : -H&M does not accept child labour. No person shall be employed at an
age younger than 15 (or 14 where the national law so allows) or younger than the legal
age for employment if this age is higher than 15. The company must take the necessary
preventive measures to ensure that it does not employ anyone below the legal age of
employment.
 Young Workers All legal limitations on the employment of persons below the age of 18
years must be followed. We acknowledge that according to the UN Convention on the
Rights of the Child, a person is a child until the age of 18. We recognise the rights of
every child to be protected from economic exploitation and from performing any work
that is likely to be hazardous or to interfere with the child's education, or to be harmful
to the child's health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development. For
further clarification regarding the prevention and remediation of child labour please see
our Code of Conduct Guidance for Implementation of Good Labour Practice.
Healthy safety

KEY ELEMENT
To help identify vulnerabilities and eliminate risks of EAR violations, begin with the
following steps:
▪ Chart your order flow from receipt of a request through shipment of ordered items
and location of transaction document files.
▪ Develop a narrative that describes the movement of the request and the responsible
personnel who take action on the request at various steps.
▪ Identify vulnerable steps where there is risk of EAR violations occurring.
▪ Implement EMCP screens that will eliminate the vulnerabilities.
 ▪ Determine frequency of checks to be performed throughout the flow process.
▪ Establish “stop,” “hold” and /or “cancel” criteria to prevent transactions from moving
forward when checks fail.
▪ Include decision instructions that tell users of the checks what actions they are to take
when checks “fail.”
▪ Establish “release” criteria for transactions that have been stopped and escalated for
further review.
▪ Identify all document file paths that make up the entire transaction story.

The social issue

To understand the current situation and the importancy of social compliance a little bit
better, this factsheet starts with a short explaination of the several human rights and
principles, on which many Code of Conducts (CoC) are based, and thus are important for
a company to take into consideration
International Labour Organization The international Labour Organization (ILO), part of
the United Unions, is a specialized organization in the field of labour issues. The main
aim of the ILO is to promote rights at work, encourage decent employment
opportunities, enhance social protection and strengthen dialogue on work-related
issues. All the decisions made by ILO are tripartite, this means that governments,
employers and employees are represented within those decisions. The ILO conventions
as set in 1998 have led to several principles and rights concerning labour issues. Those
conventions shall be construed as fundamental labour law, thus those rights have a
Universal validity. Because of this Universal validity 99% of the social compliance
initiatives based their CoC on the ILO conventions. The labour conventions as
established in recent years concerning working conditions are: - Prohibition of Child
Labour - Prohibition of forced and compulsory labour and disciplinary measures -
Prohibition of discrimination - Freedom of association and the right the collective
bargaining - Compensation - Working hours - Workplace health and safety.

The OESO-guidelines make a clear explanation to what is expected of companies by the

Dutch government (and 45 other countries) when doing (international) business in the
field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). It provides handles for companies to
reduces issues concerning supply chain responsibility, human rights, child labour or the
environment. By working regarding the OESOguidelines a company will operate more
transparent and with less risks.
UN Guiding Principles (and Ruggie)
The Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Guiding Principles) are the first
global set of guidelines on business and human rights. The Guiding Principles, developed
by John Ruggie, provide an important framework for corporations, states, civil society
and others as they work to strengthen their respective approaches to the issue of
business and human rights. The principles are organized under a three-pillar framework:
Protect: States have a duty to protect against human rights abuses by third parties,
 including business enterprises, through appropriate policies, regulations, and
adjudication. Respect: A company’s minimum responsibility is to respect all human
rights. Companies should take into account the potential negative effects on people and
percent and mitigate them through policy commitment, human rights due diligence and
remediation, including where it concerns impacts through a company’s relationships
(eg. suppliers, contractors, governments). Remedy: There is a need for greater access to
remedy for victims of business-related abuse, both judicial and non-judicial.

SOCIAL COMPLIANCE FOR GARMENT FACTORIES: HOW YOU CAN AVOID DISASTERS

On the eve of the Fourth of July this year, an explosion at a garment factory in Bangladesh
killed 10 workers and injured 50. To many Americans decked out in red, white and blue
apparel that may have been made in Bangladesh, this disaster probably went unnoticed.
But for garment importers, the tragedy isn’t the first of its kind to hit the industry.

The 2013 collapse of an eight-story complex in Dhaka, known as Rana Plaza, killed 1,134
people and injured some 2,500 others. These represent a string of recent industrial
disasters in the garment industry due to the quick, and often shoddy, construction of
thousands of factories in Central and Southeast Asia. Social compliance concerns like
these not only affect the safety of millions of workers worldwide. They also threaten the
thousands of brands that purchase from suppliers overseas.

Garment importers, in particular, are at risk due to the highly labor-intensive processes

involved in manufacturing garments. As many importers like you have discovered,
investigating any potential suppliers before beginning work with them is vital to limiting this
risk (related: how Beta brand verified their suppliers). Before delving into common
compliance concerns and how you can best prevent them, let’s look at potential
consequences of compliance violations.

SOCIAL
COMPLIANCE FOR
GARMENT
FACTORIES: HOW
YOU CAN AVOID DI
Refrences
1. Nazim Ullah, Md. Misfar Abdulla Sunny and Md. Habibur Rahman
Garment Industry in Bangladesh: An Exclusive Study
20.21 ecember, 2013 BIAM Foundation
2. Vicky yu
SOCIAL COMPLIANCE FOR GARMENT FACTORIES: HOW YOU CAN AVOID
DISASTERS
18 july 2017