Mature industrial relations vital for post MFA survival
Speaking in Toronto recently, Neil Kearney, General Secretary of the
Brussels-based International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers'
Federation, said that in order to survive in a liberalised trade
environment, external social auditing of working conditions must give
way to sound industrial relations at the workplace level. "To survive in
the global market today, clothing and footwear companies need to offer
the right product, at the right price, and made in the right
conditions," said Kearney.
"At the present time, while many countries probably satisfy the first
two conditions, only a handful satisfy the third condition. Efforts have
been underway to remedy this situation, mainly through external attempts
to eliminate child labour and forced labour and deal with wages and
health and safety issues. In the main, those efforts have not been
particularly successful. Witness the appalling lack of industrial safety
which led to the collapse last month of a nine-storey garment factory in
Bangladesh, as well as the underpayment of wages and the excessive
working hours which go on almost everywhere," he said.
"It is becoming increasingly clear that the process of social
auditing imposed from outside is not capable of delivering progress at
the speed or level required. There is now a growing recognition on the
part of some of the leading companies in the field that the most
effective approach is to ensure continual monitoring through a system of
mature industrial relations in individual workplaces.
"However, a mature system of industrial relations requires collective
action on the part of the workforce, which means that workers have the
right to freely form or join unions of their own choosing and are able
to negotiate collective agreements which would provide for a complaints
mechanism and a process of social dialogue. Given the global nature of
manufacturing, merchandising and retailing, this requires additional
industrial relations' structures which link the global level to national
and plant level," he said.
The International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation is
a global union federation bringing together 220 affiliated organisations
in 110 countries with a combined membership of 10 million workers. |