Case Study: The ETI Child Labour Project (2001-2002).
An example of iterative exploration of a global supply chain code of labour
practice issue.
- The Issue of Child Labour in Global Supply Chains
- Information about the Incidence of Child Labour
- The First ETI Sourcing Survey
- The Second Sourcing Survey
- The India Six Region Survey
- Learning to Date
- The Next Steps
Abstract
This case study describes the way the ETI Child Labour working group made
an initial assessment of global child labour risks and selected a location
for a pilot project to identify, reduce and eventually eliminate child labour
from the supply chain in a way that contributes positively to the lives
of the children affected and their communities. The Working Group faced
two related uncertainties: (1) uncertainty as to the degree of risk of child
labour globally in export supply chains, and (2) uncertainty as to the existence
or amount of child labour within the particular supply chains of individual
ETI member companies. The Working Group adopted a search strategy based
on the intersection of three sets: (1) industries within countries with
a risk of child labour identified in exiting bibliographic and web sources,
(2) a ranked list of the country/industry product sources of ETI corporate
members, and (3) a list of potential Trade Union and NGO partners in supplier
countries. To keep the data manageable, the search was conducted in an iterative
fashion, with the level of detail increasing as the number of target locations
became smaller. In the first stage, child labour risks and ETI sourcing
were surveyed globally. Four countries were short-listed: Thailand, India,
Indonesia and Italy. In the second stage, the city and regional locations
of the targeted product sources within the four countries were surveyed,
along with potential Trade Union and NGO partners. The shortlist was reduced
to one country: India. Within India, six states presented possible locations.
In the third stage, members sourcing from India were surveyed for product
source and partner information within these six states. On the basis of
the data gathered, Tamil Nadu (urban centre Chennai) was selected as the
place to initiate a pilot project.
1. The Issue of Child Labour in Global Supply Chains
For some time prior to the formation of the Child Labour Working Group
in early 2001, ETI members had been aware of a general risk of child labour
in their international supply chains, despite the relatively low reporting
of incidences of child labour in workplace monitoring undertaken by ETI
member companies [1].There was a feeling amongst
ETI corporate members that child labour might be present in their supply
chains but out of sight, for example away from principal factory locations
and pack-houses, in the workplaces of sub-contractors or on the farms feeding
to the processing and packing facilities. Alternatively, child labour might
occur at times when buyers or auditors were not present in the workplace.
The concerns felt by corporate members of ETI were underlined by the NGO
and Trade Union members of ETI whose partners in supplier countries confirmed
that the risk of child labour in export supply chains was real.
In addition to a feeling of unease that standard supplier checks were not
picking up the presence of child labour in locations where there were known
risks, ETI members expressed the desire to do something systematic and meaningful
about the issue, rather than trying to address it individually or in an
ad hoc manner. For this reason, the ETI Child Labour Working Group was formed.
Any member of ETI was free to join the group and a number of corporate,
NGO and Trade Union members did so. The Group also established contact with
the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) of
the International Labour Organisation (ILO).
2. Information about the Incidence of Child Labour
The first question addressed by the Working Group was the availability
of information about the incidence of child labour. Was there an existing
source of information about child labour that would enable ETI’s corporate
members to make a quick and accurate assessment of the existence of child
labour in the particular industries and locations within the countries they
were sourcing from?
To find this out, ETI commissioned a survey of available sources of information
on child labour. This survey was conducted in May 2001 and examined the
following sources:
- The International Labour Organisation (London and Geneva): Yearbook
of Labour Statistics, IPEC and SIMPOC (Statistical Information and Monitoring
Programme on Child Labour).
- UNICEF (London office)
- The Global March Against Child Labour (web site)
- Save the Children (resource centre)
- Anti-Slavery International (library)
- The International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU)
- The Department for International Development (DFID)
The conclusion of this review was that there was a large literature on
child labour but that nowhere was there a database containing the processed
information ETI members needed (number of child labourers by industry minor
group [2] by country) [3]. In most countries child labour
had not been surveyed at the level of disaggregation or with the accuracy
needed for ETI members to take a statistical approach to risk analysis.
The best single source found for global information was the web site of
the Global March Against Child Labour which contained country reports on
the incidence of child labour, giving estimates of numbers and occupational
categories where the information was available. The Global March country
reports were themselves compendia of reports on child labour from many sources,
official and unofficial.
The Working Group decided to develop a short list of countries in which
to pilot work on child labour by surveying ETI members to find out which
were the principal source countries and then to compare this list with reports
of child labour from the Global
March web site.
3. The First ETI Sourcing Survey
ETI corporate members were asked to list the top fifteen countries from
which they sourced, ranked according to value of product processed, and
to list the principal products from each country. A ranking was requested,
rather than the monetary value of purchases, for reasons of commercial confidentiality.
The results of the survey were aggregated to produce a combined ranking
for all the companies that responded. The method used to aggregate the results
was to assign points to each country entry for each company in inverse relationship
to the rank (i.e. 15 points for country number one, 14 points for country
number two and so on down to one point for country number 15), and then
to sum the results for all companies. The effect of this method was to weight
the rankings according to the importance of the country for each ETI company
member, rather than according to the aggregate value of product purchased.
The top ten countries were: China, Indonesia, India, Israel, Thailand,
Chile, Portugal, Turkey, Sri Lanka and Italy, with the main products being:
garments, footwear, fruit and vegetables, seafood, tea and toys. A total
of 49 countries were represented.
Information on child labour in these forty nine countries from the Global
March web site was then compiled in order to identify industry matches with
ETI sourcing.
An additional, pragmatic selection criterion was added: that there should
be at least three ETI companies (out of eight respondents) sourcing from
each of the countries in question. This was to ensure that the countries
chosen would permit as wide a participation as possible by ETI member companies
in a pilot project.
This enabled the following priority list to be produced:
Table 1: Potential ETI Child Labour Action Shortlist [4]
China and Israel were in the top ten sourcing countries but were reported
to have low incidences of child labour. There were no specific reports of
child labour in the sectors identified by ETI members in those countries,
so they were not added to the potential action short list.
On the basis of the above shortlist, the Working Group decided to select
four countries as locations for project work: Thailand, Indonesia, India
and Italy. Italy was added to the first three on the shortlist for two reasons.
Firstly, there were reports of child labour in Italy in sectors of interest
to ETI (e.g. garments). Secondly, it was felt that Italy – a developed
EU country – would provide an informative contrast to the developing
countries on the shortlist.
In order to make a decision about project locations within these four countries
the Working Group decided to survey ETI’s corporate membership a second
time, asking for more detailed product/location information. At the same
time, the ETI Secretariat would compile a list of potential Trade Union,
NGO and Official partners, by location within the four countries.
4. The Second Sourcing Survey
ETI Corporate members were sent a questionnaire listing each of the products
with an identified risk [5] of child
labour in Indonesia, India, Thailand and Italy and asked to indicate the
town or city and region from which they sourced each of the products. There
were twelve respondents to the survey. The results were entered in a database
and mapped for ease of reference.
At the same time, the ETI Secretariat prepared a list of potential partners
and these were also mapped for each of the four countries. Potential partners
included NGOs working on child labour, Trade Unions active in the relevant
industries, multilateral organisations such as the ILO and UNICEF and the
regional offices of ILO-IPEC.
The results of the second sourcing survey showed that there was a wide
dispersion of ETI sourcing within the four target countries [6]
. The places where there were concentrations of sourcing and potential partners
were around Bangkok in Thailand, the Jakarta/Bandung/Karawang area in Indonesia,
the regions around Delhi and Chennai in India, and Florence and the Po valley
in Italy.
In discussing these results the Working Group realised that it would be
over-ambitious to try to run projects in four countries. Three criteria
were adopted to further refine the shortlist: (1) volume of trading (as
many ETI members as possible), (2) ability of members to identify potential
partners, and (3) favourable local government policy.
On the basis of these criteria, the Group decided to focus on two product
categories (food and non-food) in India. In addition to Delhi and Chennai,
the Working Group decided to look at Bangalore (Karnataka), Mumbai (Maharashtra),
Ahmedabad (Gujarat) and Agra and Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh).
5. The India Six Region Survey
To make the final choice, the Working Group surveyed ETI corporate members
again, asking for precise sourcing details from the six chosen states. Twenty-two
out of twenty-four corporate members responded to the survey (or had already
supplied the information in answer to the previous questionnaire). The higher
response rate reflected extra efforts made to encourage response and, possibly,
more interest in the project arising from the reports made by the Working
Group to the membership.
Table 2: Summary of Responses to India Six Region Survey [7]
Based on this information, and the decision criteria previously agreed
(volume of trading, partnership capacity and favourable local government
policy) the Working Group decided to focus on Tamil Nadu. The food product
in Tamil Nadu was prawns, and as ETI already had a working group on prawns
it was decided to leave the child labour aspects of prawn production to
that group. This left the non-food products in Tamil Nadu to the Child Labour
Working Group. Prominent amongst those was garments, and it was recognised
that Tirupur (in western Tamil Nadu) was the principal location for the
India garment export trade.
6. Learning to Date
This phase of the Child Labour project – the phase of collecting
global information of child labour risks and deciding where to initiate
a project – took nine months, from May 2001 to January 2002. While
this may appear to be a considerable period of time, it enabled the Working
Group to adopt a systematic approach to deciding where to begin work. This
was necessary because of the uncertainties surrounding the degree risk of
child labour in the supply chain and the desire on the part of ETI members
to do something meaningful rather than ad hoc.
In the course of its four meetings, the sector representatives on the Working
Group were able to discuss their views and expectations of a child labour
project and to report back to their constituency groups.
The iterative process of surveying and short-listing led to a significant
change in members’ expectations. At the beginning, the Group felt
that it could address multiple products in several countries. But after
looking at the wide geographical dispersion of ETI sourcing (including a
wide dispersion within large countries like Indonesia and India) and the
practicalities of building relationships with partner organisations, the
Group decided that one product group within one region of one country was
sufficient. It decided to focus on non-food products (especially garments)
within the state of Tamil Nadu in India.
One weakness in the short-listing process was the low response to the first
survey (eight companies out of 22). However, the response to the final survey
was high (22 out of 24). Eighteen of the respondents sourced from India
and eleven from Tamil Nadu, which indicates that the initial survey was
reasonably representative.
At the time of the first survey a sense-check was made by comparing the
results of the survey with the results of the country breakdown ETI monitoring
in the 2000 ETI Annual Report. This showed a reasonable correlation.
7. The Next Steps
The next task is to begin practical work in Tamil Nadu. This will involve
a closer examination of the supply chain for the presence of child labour
(at secondary and tertiary levels of the supply chain as well as at the
top level), discussion of the child labour issue with ETI suppliers and
potential partners and the commencement of an appropriate pilot project.
The results of this work will be reported in a future ETI publication.
References
From Good Intentions
to Good Practice – ETI’s Strategy in Support of Ethical Trade
2001-2004, ETI, 2001.
Minutes of Meetings of the ETI Child Labour Working Group
.
National Systems of Innovation: Towards a Theory of Innovation and Interactive
Learning, Bengt-Åke Lundvall (ed.), Pinter, 1992.
Purpose, Principles, Programme, Membership,
Information, ETI, September 1998.
Report on Availability of Information on Child Labour in Global Supply
Chains, David Steele, ETI, May 2001.
Results of ETI Sourcing Survey and Further Research into the Incidence
of Child Labour, David Steele, ETI, 10 July 2001.
Report on Second Sourcing Survey, Next Steps and Learning Objectives, David
Steele, ETI, 11 October 2001.
The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing, Kenneth J. Arrow, The Review
of Economic Studies, Vol 29 (3), No. 80, June 1962, pp155-173.
The Web Site of the Global March Against Child Labour, www.globalmarch.org
Appendix: The ETI Child Labour Project in the context of ETI’s “learning
by doing” framework
The Ethical Trading Initiative is an alliance of companies, trade union
organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) committed to working
together to identify and promote good practice in the implementation of
codes of labour practice. The ultimate goal of ETI is to improve the lives
of workers and their families through the application of internationally
recognised labour standards in global supply chains. To achieve this goal,
ETI has adopted a systematic approach to learning. ETI identifies itself
as a learning organisation with a focus on “learning by doing”
[8] .
The idea of “learning by doing” reflects the fact that societies
and organisations are in a constant process of evolution, motivated by a
more or less conscious desire to gain knowledge that can be used to improve
welfare. Furthermore, only a limited part of the learning process can be
conducted as a specialised activity, separated from the demands of day-to-day
work. Much learning necessarily occurs in the workplace (from the farm or
factory floor to the boardroom) and is directly related to solving the problems
that day-to-day work has thrown up, or devising better strategies for the
survival and prosperity of the organisation in question. [9]
Furthermore, “leaning by doing” reflects an understanding that
there is no end-point to the process of change. There is no final “best
practice” incapable of being improved upon. Rather, improvement is
a continuous process. Small, useful improvements, continually adopted, have
a cumulative effect that, over time, lead to large changes enabling the
best-adapted organisations to prosper.
In its 2001-2004 strategy document, ETI summed up its approach as follows:
“ETI is therefore about experimentation and ‘learning by doing’.
We provide an opportunity for our members to:
- learn what applying different labour standards actually means in practice
- test different approaches to workplace monitoring
- experiment with different ways of ensuring that code observance is independently
verified.
We also focus on sharing learning. We record ‘best-practice’
approaches and seek to publicise these internationally through publications,
seminars and conferences.”
The Working Group has considered a set of learning objectives for the child
labour project. These are:
- How to use targeted research (risk analysis) and supply base surveys
to get hold of a dispersed international ethical supply chain problem.
- How to identify and make contact with potential international partners
(NGOs, unions and official organisations) to assist in addressing an ethical
supply chain problem.
- How companies can best find out whether there is a child labour problem
in an extended supply chain (factory or farm, subcontractors, suppliers
of suppliers).
- How to effectively remedy the problem of child labour.
- How to remedy the problem of child labour in a way that satisfies all
ETI stakeholder groups.
The aim of the pilot project is to find answers to these questions and to
make these available to other ETI members and a wider audience so as to
stimulate work on the child labour issue and bring about an earlier end
to child labour in international supply chains than would otherwise be the
case.
(ends)
See Also:
Activities: Experimental
Projects: Child
Labour project
Resources:
Issues: Child
Labour
Footnotes
- ETI Annual Reports for 1999 and 2000. [context]
- i.e. industry sub-categories identified by number at the five digit
level in the International Standard Industrial Classifications (ISIC).
[context]
- Report on Availability of Information on Child Labour in Global Supply
Chains, ETI, May 2001 [context]
- Results of ETI Sourcing Survey and Further Research into the Incidence
of Child Labour, ETI, 10 July 2001. [context]
- From the Global March country reports. [context]
- Report on Second Sourcing Survey, Next Steps and Learning Objectives,
ETI, 11 October 2001 [context]
- Minutes of the Child Labour Working Group, Tuesday 15 January 2002.
[context]
- From Good Intentions to Good Practice, ETI Strategy 2001-2004, p3. [context]
- See, for example, Arrow (1962) pp155-156, Lundvall (1992) p9. [context]
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