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Developing child labour policies: examples from four major businesses
Appendix 6 focuses on four companies that have taken action on child labour and adopted codes excluding the use of child labour by their suppliers.
The companies are:
Reebok International Ltd
Reebok adopted the Reebok Human Rights Production Standards in 1992, covering nine areas including “No Child Labour”. In order to more easily monitor that child labour is not used in stitching footballs so that their footballs can bear the label “Guaranteed: Manufactured Without Child Labor” Reebok built a centralised stitching factory in 1997. An unintended consequence of moving from homeworking to a centralised workplace has been that the number of women in the workforce has fallen.
Levi Strauss & Co
In 1991, Levis Strauss developed its “Global Sourcing and Operating Guidelines”, stipulating that workers must be at least 15 years of age to work for them or their suppliers. When they found that suppliers were using child labour in Bangladesh, Levi Strauss reportedly negotiated corrective action with their suppliers that involved removing the children from the factories, placing them in education and paying their wages until they reached an age at which they could return to work.
Pentland Group plc
Pentland’s “Group Code of Employment Standards for Suppliers” is apparently consistent with relevant ILO conventions and recommendations on child labour and requires that “child labour is not used”.
IKEA
The IKEA code of conduct “The IKEA Way on Purchasing Home Furnishing Products” was introduced in 2000, and is accompanied by an appendix called “The IKEA Way on Preventing Child Labour”. The provisions on child labour are notable for their requirement that “all actions to avoid child labour shall be implemented taking the child’s best interests into account”.
