11 Jan Retailing Behemoths Agree on Code of Conduct
The story here (also fronted in the FT). With half a trillion dollars in annual sales, this effort of Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour and Metro — the world’s four largest superstores — is bound to be of consequence.
One question mark: can a code such as this, labeled the Global Social Compliance Program and purporting to regulate the company’s suppliers on such issues as child labour and wages, succeed without the support of the labor/human rights community? My guess is that the NGOs will have to be brought on board in some formal way (via an advisory council of some sort) or the project will fail as insufficiently inclusive of stakeholder voices. There’s also the question of whether this model of privately-sponsored and supervised social responsibility will carry the day, or whether some public umbrella (in the way of the UN Global Compact, in which none of these companies participate) is necessary as a legitimating institutional feature.
I agree that a a corporate code such as this, emblematic of the shift from public to private regulation (As Bob Hepple notes, ‘The story may be described as one of retreat from public international labour law, embodied above all in the conventions and recommendations of the ILO, to privatised “soft” regulation.’) and illustrative of the fragmented nature of transnational labor regulation (e.g.: public codes from international sources, codes produced at regional levels, codes promoted by national governments and, of late, private initiatives, i.e., internal self-regulatory internal codes) will require the ‘support of the labor/human rights community,’ be it the International Labour Organisation, international trade unions, or human rights NGOs. And I further agree that there’s the pressing if not most important question of whether private initiatives or some transnational regulatory ‘public umbrella’ will prevail. In addition to the UN Global Compact, there’s the ILO’ Declaration of Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (1998), and its Decent Work Agenda (1999), although the Global Compact integrates labor, human rights and environmental standards for transnational corporations. On the other hand, something like the Global Social Compliance Program might be seen as an endeavor to avoid unionization efforts, something that will be easier… Read more »