Towards the close of another gruelling year for the world's workers, ETI's Director Peter McAllister has called for collaborative action to tackle the underlying causes of workers' rights abuses in global supply chains.

Reflecting on the fact that the poorest and most vulnerable workers in the world are suffering the most from continuing economic uncertainty, McAllister said: "Unless we work collectively to address the complex reasons behind violations of workers' rights, positive change for workers will never be sustainable."

McAllister's comments are set out in ETI's Annual Review for 2011, which describes progress made so far in implementing a new approach to ethical trade.

Collaborative work has been undertaken throughout the year by ETI's member companies, trade unions and NGOs to identify and start to map priority supply chains in each of three broad product category groups: Food and Farming, Hard Goods and Household and Apparel and Textiles.

Priority supply chains have now been identified within each category. The next step is to start to develop comprehensive collaborative programmes of work in each supply chain, the lessons from which work will be captured and shared by ETI's new Knowledge and Learning Unit.

The process of developing collaborative programmes has already started for sandstone sourced from Rajasthan and garments from southern India, with more planned for the New Year.

Supply chains have been selected using a range of criteria, including the vulnerability of workers, our ability to leverage collective change in the supply chain concerned and the potential for wider lessons to be learned.

Says McAllister: "I am convinced our new approach will help us realise our ambitions."

ETI's Annual Review also highlights work carried out by ETI partners in key sourcing countries. For example, Director of the Indian National Homeworker Group Alok Singh describes plans to test the model of self-empowerment it has created for poor and vulnerable homeworkers in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh.

WIETA project manager Desmeline Minyi describes progress in marketing ETI's groundbreaking supervisor training programme to farmers across the Western Cape.

Listen to Peter McAllister talking about our new approach below.