| Mosaic Fashions | | Print | |
Mosaic fashions(Coast, Karen Millen, Oasis, Odille, Principles, The Shoe Store, Warehouse) Download Mosaic Fashions' submission (pdf) Responded to survey: yes MSI involvement: no [what's this?] Grade 2: Acknowledges that minimum and industry benchmark wages are not sufficient standards, but no real efforts to apply living wage. [what's this?] SummaryA lack of substance on living wages, but progress in other areas from a year ago. Position on living wagesHas adopted the same wording as the ETI base code. Work so far on living wagesNone mentioned Plans on living wages"We are currently defining our methodology on living wages, which will involve incremental improvements through a step by step approach...we are also learning from the pilot projects and strategies of other retailers/organisations." Other significant informationMentioned various activities to do with the development of its ethical trading programme. Our commentsAs promised, a significant improvement on 2007's meagre effort, but Mosaic is still a long way behind other retailers. It would benefit from joining a multi-stakeholder initiative.
Katie Fewings
said:
|
|||||
| I wrote to Mosaic asking them about their ethical policies and why they had not joined the ETI. After receiving what seemed to be a standard response, I asked for more information and received the following: My name is Anita Nagarajan and I am the Ethical Trading Manager for Mosaic Fashions (the parent company of Coast). I apologise for the delay in responding to your questions to my colleague, Dave Puddle, however, things have been a little bit busy as I am currently arranging an Ethical Trading Code of Conduct training workshop for our Turkish suppliers. Firstly, I’d like to explain that since ‘Let’s Clean up Fashions’ was published there have been a number of changes at Mosaic Fashions with respect to Ethical Trading. We have adopted a new group-wide Code of Conduct which stipulates that suppliers are required to pay workers a living wage and our Code is now fully aligned to the ETI Base Code (and all the International Labour Organisation’s Core Conventions). The Code also includes a provision on environmental protection too. We take seriously our policy on ethical commitments and work with our suppliers to ensure they are following our Code (hence the training workshop for our Turkish suppliers). Secondly, we now have a local Ethical Trading team in China which has allowed us to dedicate more time and resources to implementing and monitoring our Code of Conduct in China - our biggest sourcing country. This has allowed us to increase the number of audits (scheduled and unscheduled) and follow up visits with our suppliers, as well as talk to more workers and find out their views about working conditions. We use these worker interviews to learn more about workers’ experiences, their likes and dislikes and ultimately to inform our approach to Ethical Trading. I am also organising a workshop in China for local suppliers to educate them further on our Code of Conduct. With respect to the ETI, we have taken the decision not to join simply on the basis that maintaining membership is extremely administrative and resource-hungry and we feel that resources are better focused on directly improving working conditions, such as capacity building programmes (for example, our in-country training programmes) or further auditing of our supply base, which allows us to spend valuable time with workers. I hope this goes a long way to reassure you about our Ethical Trading policy commitments. If you have any other questions, please do no hesitate to contact me. Kindest regards, Anita Nagarajan Ethical Trading Manager - Global |
Supporters
