Laura Ashley

Download Laura Ashley's submission (pdf)

Responded to survey: yes

MSI involvement: no [what's this?]

Grade 1: Accepts the principle of a living wage, but applies legal minimum/industry benchmark. [what's this?]

Summary

Its only activity on living wages has been a change of wording in its code of conduct, which will not make a jot of difference on the ground.

Position on living wages

“Laura Ashley believes and endorses the living wage ideal. Wage should meet basic needs and provide some discretionary income.”

Work so far on living wages

None mentioned

Plans on living wages

None mentioned

Other significant information

“Work also continues on our factory audit programme. The technologists for fashion have completed audits in China, Romania, Portugal and Turkey during 2007 and 2008. The next target for us is Morocco. They have also attended an external training course on Ethical Audits. We will now need to update our audit forms to enable us to carry out additional checks.”

Our comments

Laura Ashley has updated its code of conduct to include reference to living wages, but only as an ideal. It seems unlikely that this change of wording will make any difference on the ground, especially given how few ethical audits it performs, and the fact that these are not performed by ethical specialists.

Laura Ashley used the ETI base code to update its code of conduct, so why won't it join a multi-stakeholder initiative such as ETI?