Harmonize Your Codes... Internally

A couple of weeks ago, I attended a briefing by the UK-based Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).  The ETI had commissioned a study to assess how effective the implementation of its code of conduct has been, and it shared the results with a number of members of the CSR community.  One of the study’s findings was that although the number of hours worked is decreasing in some areas, workers in these areas are often not happy about working fewer hours as their wages do not rise by a corresponding amount, so they are left out of  pocket.  As the report researchers pointed out, codes of conduct must account for the relationship between these two elements.

However, in drafting and implementing codes, shouldn’t companies have to look at how all code elements, not just two, work together (or fail to, as the case may be)?  Much has been made of the need to harmonize various company initiatives in order to reduce the number of codes suppliers are subject to.  The ETI code study also alludes to this need.  What I have not seen is a call to have code clauses harmonized – I’ll explain what I mean.

In my experience, companies approach the writing of codes one clause at a time.  What should the clause on child labor say? OK, done.  Next.  What should the clause on collective bargaining say?  And so on.  The effect of this approach is a number of free standing clauses that happen to be on the same sheet of paper but that can either fail to support each other or can conflict in what they require of suppliers.

Here’s an example… I audited at a factory in the UK last year where some workers were working in excess of the number of hours stipulated in the code to which I was auditing.  When I asked the workers about this, they were adamant that they were working the hours according to a collective bargaining agreement and wanted the hours to earn more money.  Let’s say that I had pushed the working hours clause as most important.  Not only would this decision have compromised employees’ earnings, but it would have directly conflicted with their right to collective bargaining, a fundamental right covered under the ILO core convention no. 98.

This example raises another issue.  Some clauses might need to have greater weight than others.  For example, workers have so little input in code drafting, I would advocate that freedom of association and collective bargaining take precedence over all other clauses.  Then, say, wage and hour clauses would be the second strongest clauses, followed by child labor and health and safety.

Of course, I can’t prescribe a weight system.  This type of approach would have to be hammered out in multi-stakeholder fora.  My point is this: codes must be seen as unified documents, not the sum of individual parts.  All of the clauses must fit with each other and support each other in order to ensure that the code can function.  So when people draft a code, they should remember to harmonize internally as well as externally.