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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.

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