2010: A year of change

2010 has seen significant change at ETI. Our new strategy has started to take the shape of concrete plans; membership has continued to grow - collectively our member companies now reach over 9.4 million workers around the world - and after 11 years, ETI staff and members said goodbye to Dan Rees, who provided so much of the vision and leadership for this unique alliance since its inception.

In the wider world, conditions have remained difficult. Many large economies have struggled to move out of recession, and continued pressure on prices and margins for suppliers has contributed to increased insecurity for many workers. More worrying still, food prices have increased further, making life even harder for the millions of vulnerable people in supply chains who face a daily struggle to make ends meet.

We must temper any pride in our achievements in 2010 with this knowledge.

And yet I am confident that our unique approach, which harnesses the business acumen and commercial leverage of companies alongside the expertise and global reach of our trade union and NGO members, is the most effective way of delivering concrete change for workers.

We have just published a brief review of 2010, which sets out some of the highlights of our year. These include meeting rapidly increasing demand for our training courses, which now include new specialised workshops for buying staff and senior executives, HR managers in UK supplier companies and public sector employees.

We are also now far more robust in our expectations of our member companies and more structured in the support we provide to them. For companies new to ETI, our new Foundation stage programme provides clear direction and support to help them get started on their ethical trade journey.

Meanwhile, our tripartite work in supply chains increasingly reflects a shift away from the narrow, audit-heavy approach to ethical trade that characterized ethical trade's first decade. We are working towards a far more nuanced approach, which aims to address the root causes of poor working conditions - not just the symptoms.

This approach includes helping build supplier capacity in sourcing countries to provide decent pay and conditions; empowering workers so that they can shape their own destinies; reaching out to the most vulnerable workers in the supply chain; and advocating for government policy change.

It also involves a need for companies to acknowledge the impact of their buying practices on the people who make their products. This must include an honest examination of the impact of their price negotiations with suppliers on workers' wages. In this area, we are making some progress, though it is not yet fast enough.

My first few months as Executive Director have provided a fantastic opportunity to learn about ETI's many strengths - not least the commitment and engagement of our membership - and to start to introduce some fresh perspectives into our thinking. In the last quarter of 2010 we commissioned a rigorous external evaluation and have since carried out a review of our approach to enable us to maximise our ability to leverage change.

We are entering yet another difficult year for the world economy but I look forward to helping ETI rise to the many challenges we will face in working towards our vision: a world where all workers are free from exploitation and discrimination, and work in conditions of freedom, security and equity.

12 January 2011