Our impact for workers

The scale of ETI members' ethical trade activities grows every year – touching the lives of more than 15 million workers annually. 

Our vision is a world of work that protects human rights, ensures dignity for all, provides opportunity and is free of exploitation and abuse.

Our mission is to advocate for the most vulnerable workers, by harnessing the power of a diverse and growing membership. Through collaboration and innovation, we work to drive engagement, challenge barriers to change and ensure respect for human rights at work. 

Through a range of strategic activities, we enable workers to freely act on their rights or, where those rights are denied, enable them to access effective remedy.

The challenge

We know that fundamental principles, such as workers' rights to join a trade union and negotiate collectively, continue to need attention in order to be upheld. Other areas such as discrimination and harassment in the workplace need improving. Casual and informal sector workers are still receiving scant benefit from codes of labour practice. And global food and fuel inflation means that real wages are declining at an alarming rate in many countries.

Radical response required

Our own monitoring exercises and the current global economic climate point to the need for a radical response from the ethical trade community. There is a clear need for us to do more to help companies support their suppliers to build sound management structures and mature systems of industrial relations, and more broadly, to integrate their ethical principles into company buying practices.  For example, lead times and price negotiations with suppliers can have a profound effect on hours of work and pay levels.