‘Ethical pests' Tara Scott and Stacey Dooley, two of the six young people whose experiences of working in India's garment sector were filmed as part of the BBC3 series Blood Sweat and T-shirts, recently met Lakshmi Bhatia, Director of Global Partnerships for Gap Inc. at ETI's London offices.

During the conversation at ETI's London offices, Tara and Stacey found out what Gap Inc. has been doing to help improve the lives of the workers making clothes for sale in its stores. They also heard why Lakshmi is so passionate about ethical trade.

Lakshmi has been with Gap Inc. for more than a decade and has helped the company evolve its social responsibility programme to ensure its products are made in an ethical manner. Lakshmi is responsible for overseeing Gap Inc.'s relationships with trade unions, NGOs and governments where Gap Inc. places production. She is also working on collaborative projects dedicated to ethical trade around the world. Lakshmi has been a Board Member ETI for more than four years.

Tara and Stacey (T&S): How did you get involved in ethical trade?

After I left university, I started working with various non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Delhi on development and poverty reduction initiatives. I joined Gap as a social auditor in 1997, and spent about four years visiting factories in North India and Nepal, seeing what conditions for workers were like, hearing their stories, and working with our suppliers to improve the work environment.

I remember one time I landed in one of our sourcing countries late in the evening and, at about 11.30 at night, found myself being driven past a garment factory. I noticed that the lights were still on and realised that people were still working away. At another factory I visited early on, I walked into a place where workers were known by numbers, not by their own names.

You know, when you go into the factories, when you connect with the workers, when you hear their stories, there's just no way you can stay unmoved. At Gap, we work with our suppliers to prevent problems from occurring in the first place. But if problems do arise, we expect the issues to be resolved.

T&S: Tell us about Gap's journey

Gap has long felt a responsibility to tackle the conditions of the workers making its products, so more than a decade ago we set up our in-house 'social compliance team', which was dedicated to improving the lives of workers making our products.

People with a diverse range of backgrounds were recruited - social development experts, journalists, all sorts. There was a realisation that we needed a really broad set of skills and experience to deal with the issues we were tackling.

The other thing we did, within a month of me joining the company, was to stop using agents to source our products. If you buy from agents, that means that you have no idea where the products are coming from - there's just no traceability down the supply chain. We wanted to make sure we know where our products are coming from and that we can build relationships of trust with our suppliers.

So we started a major programme of inspections, visiting factories several times a year to find out what the problems were, and then, to go back to them to make sure any problems were addressed. And the more factories we visited, the more we realised that this is not a perfect world. Many of the issues we came up against had no easy answers.

Over the past ten years, I've been lucky enough to see Gap's Global Compliance programme learn and grow and to be involved in its development. Our team believes that workers should be treated with dignity and respect, and we regularly inspect our factories and strive to make garment factories around the world safe and decent places to work.

As well as doing inspections, we also recognise we have a responsibility to work in partnership with our factories, as well as other garment companies and concerned organisations, to improve conditions for workers across the whole industry.

It's something we take great pride in, and I can tell you that our employees around the world - designers, merchants, store associates, everyone - take great pride in the work we're doing in this area. It's one reason people want to come to work for our company and our brands.

T&S: Where is Gap now, and where do you want it to go from here?

The ethical trade team is now much more integrated within the company than it used to be. We have much more opportunity to influence business decisions that may impact working conditions. People have realised that if they are prepared to engage with their critics and admit the problems, then they will gain more respect.

For example, we have also started to look at our commercial practices. We've discovered that company buying practices make a big difference to our suppliers' ability to provide decent conditions for their workers. If buyers are constantly changing their minds about orders, and squeezing suppliers on deadlines, this can mean workers end up working excessive hours.

These are small steps, of course - but I believe they are steps in the right direction, and they're making a difference.

T&S: We used to think Gap was one of the ‘bad boys' on the high street. Do you think your reputation has changed at all?

We certainly had some bad publicity in the 1990s. But we realised we had some work to do, and that working with trade unions and other interested groups could help us make necessary improvements. We set up a ‘stakeholder engagement group' and invited these groups to tell us what they thought about us and what the problems are. We started to have very open and frank discussions with them and, as a result, felt ready in 2004 to publish a very honest report about our commitment to social responsibility and addressing the issues we face.

I think this more open stance helped win us some respect within the trade union and campaigning/advocacy community. I think there is now a recognition that although we are by no means perfect, we are trying very hard to be a responsible company and are not afraid to tackle head on some of these very serious issues, including child labour, low wages and excessive working hours, that persist in global supply chains.

T&S: Why did Gap join the Ethical Trading Initiative?

Gap joined ETI in 2004 when we came and saw the value of sitting at the table with NGO and trade union colleagues and friends, all looking collectively at an issue. We realised that it brought an incredible amount of expertise in terms of networking, in terms of problem solving, and so that's why we continue to engage. We know that you just can't solve many of these issues on your own.

T&S: So how can people like us get involved in promoting ethical trade?

Companies like Gap, working under the Ethical Trading Initiative's umbrella, need to find a way of making a link in people's minds between the clothes they buy and those incredible workers who make them.

We need to find a way of getting consumers to remember the face of every worker who was involved in making their clothes.

People can help get the message out about the really complex issues that are involved in trying to improve workers' conditions, and by reminding people that this is everyone's responsibility. It's always so easy to say ‘this is someone else's job', but until we all start accepting our individual responsibilities, we won't see the kind of change we are looking for.

So it's not just companies who, of course, have huge power - and as Nelson Mandela once said, ‘with great power comes great responsibility' - it's also governments in sourcing countries that need to make and enforce laws that protect workers' rights, and it's consumers too, who can put pressure on companies and ask the right questions.