A new report from Labour Behind the Label, a pressure group, has come out in the UK, ranking retailers for their 'sweatshop' performance. Since the web-site seems to be inaccessible in China, have a read of this comment from the Independent on the report. Apparently:

Some very large retailers admit, in the words of the report, they "have no plans to do anything about garment employees' poverty wages." Step forward Clarks, Debenhams, French Connection, House of Fraser, John Lewis, Laura Ashley, Matalan, River Island and Levi Strauss.

If you are not British, you might know who some of those companies are, but they do represent a very sizable portion of the retail market in the UK.

For the report to include Levi Strauss in that list seems to be ludicrous, as Levi Strauss have definitely be doing a lot in this area for several years. Apparently a number of other companies did not did not 'respond to the survey or make any information public', including Burberry (who I know for a fact are leading the way as luxury retailers go) -the website I looked at for Burberry has plenty of information. I am thus very dubious as to the quality of the data in this report.

update:

click here to download the report if you are inside China.

Having read the report, I can reveal the report focuses on 'Living Wages' and thus deems paying minimum wage as not being good enough. The entire report is around trying to get companies to pay a 'living wage' to the employees of their contract factories, which should be decided by workers themselves (this is not how the UK minimum wage is decided though!). The minimum wages the workers get in China are living wages. In fact most of those workers are able to save money to send home. Other countries might be different; in which case the report should compare minimum wages with 'living wages'.

Instead of lambasting companies for not paying a 'living wage', the report should focus on lambasting companies for not meeting other, more important, requirements, such as Minimum wage, having labour contracts, health and safety practices, environmental pollution and all the other laws these contract factories are breaking. Meeting the minimum law is, yes, only the minimum, but that is still what is needed. Beyond that, it is up to the market and laws to change; not necessarily the role of the buyers (unless they chose to, to distinguish their brand).

The comment concludes:

What should customers do? Boycotts do not help foreign workers, Labour Behind the Label says. Instead, it advises people to keep receipts from their favourite retailer and send them in to it, asking how it is improving workers' pay. I'd be interested to know what they say.

That sounds like pretty useless advice to me; and when i eventually manage to get hold of the report, I hope there is something in there that is more constructive. Simply creating a 'league' without any actions, or suggestions for actions, to improve the situation seems like a pretty useless report to me. Could they not, at least, organise some demonstrations outside the shops of those at the bottom of the league and plaster a copy of the league table over their windows or something?

Many other reports have been written that are based on facts (not self-reporting questionnaires), well-researched and add value to the whole supply-chain movement. It is a shame this one, which was picked up by a lot of British media, is not one of those.