The priorities we set ourselves in last year’s annual report were long-term aims and continue to be a focus for our work in 2003 - 2004.

This year we exceeded our expectations in developing closer co-operation with other code initiatives, and in sharing good practice, producing two major publications in addition to the Workbook and organising an international conference. We also made good progress on increasing our membership and influence, developing our training programme and initiating the impact assessment. Our capacity-building work and guidance documents for members progressed more slowly however. The focus for our programme in the year ahead reflects all these factors. We plan to:

Identify and promote good practice:

• Identify and promote good practice in China, with a focus on health and safety;
• Develop guidelines on: (a) implementing the Base Code with homeworkers and smallholders; (b) conducting credible oneperson, one-day risk assessments; and (c) defining and implementing a living wage;
• Prepare a detailed proposal for the licensing and registration of agencies which provide temporary labour to the food and farming industry in the UK, and put the case for legislation to enforce this.

Build capacity:

• Develop a programme to build the capacity of suppliers, trade unions and NGOs in supplying countries to implement labour codes, in particular their capacity to educate workers and improve workers’ participation in code implementation.

Share our learning:

• Devise training modules for our members and their suppliers, and establish a group of trainers qualified to deliver them;
• Enhance our website further to make it a more user-friendly and powerful resource;
• Collate case studies demonstrating the business case for ethical trade.

Measure our impact:

• Complete the UK-based part and the first two country case studies of the ETI impact assessment study.

Expand our membership:

• Recruit new members in our priority sectors, including personal care, stationery, home improvement and electronics.

Strengthen members’ commitment:

• Set clearer expectations for different types of company, and reform the way we assess corporate performance and progress in implementing the ETI Base Code.

Build alliances and relationships:

• Forge greater agreement between the key multi-stakeholder code initiatives on what constitutes good practice in code implementation.

Note:
For financial statements and notes to accounts, please see PDF/print version of this report – this can be downloaded below.
   

Picture:
What impact do codes have on smallholders? Our impact assessment will address this and other questions.