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Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Corporate Social Responsibility News
Posted: Monday, March 08, 2010, 9:58AM
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KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT TAGS
"Corporate Social Responsibility", "Supply Chain Management"
ASDA vows to treat supply chain workers more fairly
UK supermarket ASDA has vowed to move to a new business model of supply chain management which ensures workers supplying its stores are treated "fairly and equally".The Walmart firm announced it has teamed up with Unite the Union to launch a joint initiative to end discrimination and unfair treatment across the supermarket's 29 meat and poultry suppliers, employing 6000 workers.
Unite and ASDA have worked together, including meeting with all 29 of the suppliers to the supermarket, which range from major multi-nationals to local suppliers.
The move follows Unite's past criticism of the way in which supermarkets abuse their market power to drive down costs along the supply chain. The union said this model engenders a two-tier labour market, with agency workers, overwhelmingly migrant, on poorer conditions of employment and the directly-employed workers, overwhelmingly indigenous, on better conditions of employment.
The union noted that this "structural discrimination" is currently the subject of the first inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) which is due to report in March on the UK's multi-billion pound meat industry in England and Wales.
"The work by Unite the Union and the EHRC has established clear evidence of unfair treatment of workers and sometimes serious division in workforces that can damage social cohesion in local communities. ASDA has itself examined in detail the practices in its supply chain, deciding that its customers would demand nothing less than action to ensure fair and equal treatment of all workers," Unite stated.
Central to the joint initiative by Unite and ASDA are agency workers and the directly-employed being paid the same rate of pay. A second key objective has been to maximise direct employment, ending the sometimes semi-permanent status of agency workers with, in future, agency working being undertaken only to meet seasonal fluctuations and no standard practice.
Unite added that, in discussions with the 29 ASDA suppliers, unacceptable practices had been identified which ASDA has promised to bring to an end.
Unite's Deputy General Secretary, Jack Dromey said: "We warmly welcome ASDA's pioneering initiative which sends a clear message that one of Britain's biggest supermarkets is determined to put ethical principles into practice. ASDA's customers can be confident that there really is no place like ASDA.
"For years, supermarkets have driven down costs along their supply chain with tens of thousands of workers paying the price with discriminatory and unfair practices. It is wrong to exploit migrant agency workers on poorer conditions of employment and it is wrong to undercut directly employed workers on better conditions of employment.
That divides workforces and damages social cohesion in local communities.
Procurement Tags - Corporate Social Responsibility, Supply Chain Management
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