Anannya Bhattacharjee, President of Garment and Allied Workers Union (GAWU) and Executive Council Member of the New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI), YES.
The failure of voluntary codes of conduct to curb inhumane conditions in the global supply chains of major apparel brands is a well-established fact. This failure has been carefully documented in numerous reports for decades .One would think that this track record would be sufficient to dispel any illusions about self-regulation. However, debates over the merits of self-regulation continue – as if this were a new and exciting topic, when it is neither exciting nor new.
The voluntary and self-regulatory methods have helped to proliferate, by a conservative estimate, a third party social audit industry of $40 billion. Yet this industry has failed to benefit garment workers, and has even lost credibility amongst both garment suppliers and some major brands. In order to compensate for ongoing shortfalls in the third-party social audit industry, some brands have turned to self-auditing. Since conditions of workers have not improved, one is forced to come to the same conclusions regarding the shortcomings of self-audits.
