Next

Download Next's submission (pdf)

Responded to survey: yes

MSI involvement: yes, Ethical Trading Initiative [what's this?]

Grade 3.0: Can offer concrete examples of steps to increase wages in the supplier base, but there are either significant omissions or there is no clear plan to move beyond pilot projects. [what's this?]

Summary

Doesn't quite live up to the promise that it outlined last year, and now seems only to have a set of disparate pilot and research projects: will need to pull them together into a coherent strategy with a clear path to implementing a living wage.

Position on living wages

"As we have said previously, achieving compliance to the living wage is a major challenge but one to which we remain committed."

Work so far on living wages

"During 2007 we initiated a series of country studies of the living wage in our key sourcing countries...The results of these studies confirmed a conclusion reached by many other organisations, NGO’s and Trade Unions included, that the wide and varied factors within each factory and industry such as output, present technology, worker/management communication, staff retention and the business model a factory has adopted, all impact actual wages paid.  The studies also confirmed that due to these and numerous other factors the achievement of the living wage provision is localised to each factory...The research highlighted again the complexity of implementing a sustainable living wage."

Plans on living wages

Next highlighted a number of pilot projects:

• China: A productivity project in 12 factories that includes “redesigning the wage structure for both supervisors and workers with a view to giving a greater degree of incentive for supervisors to help workers with low efficiency introducing a productivity concept which will reward workers with high productivity and perform a wage analysis at regular intervals.”

• Sri Lanka: “an initiative to share the vast amount of expertise and experience we have within our own organisation to other factories in the area.”

• Mauritius: “Working with one supplier we share [with Arcadia Group] in Mauritius we introduced in January 2008 a piece rate system. Reviews of the first five months of this year have shown that an average worker has seen their earnings improve by at least 38% compared to the same period last year.”

• Migrant workers: a project examining the unfair treatment of migrant workers looking at factories and recruitment agencies.

• Homeworkers: “a wages study through 4 supply chains of embellished product.”

• Bangladesh: “Working together with Arcadia Group Ltd we have identified a shared factory in Bangladesh where we plan to carry out an extensive wage study.” Next also mentioned the ETI project.

Other significant information

None mentioned.

Our comments

Last year we were impressed by Next's ambitious plans. This year it appears that those plans have not been realised to the extent it expected, because, “the studies did not provide us with the hard and fast figures we envisaged.” Instead it says that it will use the learning from and outcomes of each of the projects listed above to make more plans in the next six months. This is of course a little disappointing, and it is odd that Next has now been overtaken by some other retailers whose work seems to be more systematic and developed.

If we take Next's submission at face value, it is taking more time because it is first of all exploring how to adapt to the complexities created by, for example, migrant and home working. If this is the case, we should expect that when Next does move to the level of living wages project and strategy, it will be the most sophisticated we have seen.

There is of course an alternative possibility, which is that Next has faltered in its progress towards living wages. Time will tell.