Improving the Lives of Global Supply Chain Workers

As You Sow is committed to ensuring that corporations abide by internationally recognized human rights standards in their operations, those of their vendors and raw material suppliers, and in the societies where they do business.

Our current initiatives focus on improving the lives of global supply chain workers by ensuring enforcement of corporate codes of vendor conduct with factories that make their product. In addition, we are asking companies to promote the same standards throughout their entire supply chain down to raw material harvesting and extracting.

Following are a series of interviews addressing several of the pressing challenges we are facing in global supply chains, namely with cotton that makes its way into apparel products and home goods. Transparency and traceability are two key elements needed to encourage adherence to basic human rights and environmental standards.

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  Patricia Jurewicz, As You Sow

  Addressing Risks in Cotton Production

  Patricia describes the situation in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan and gives recommendations for steps brands and retailers can take.

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  Kindley Walsh Lawlor, Gap Inc.

  Acting Responsibly

  Kindley speaks on Gap Inc.’s actions to ban Uzbek cotton from its supply chain.

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  Tracing the Supply Chain

  Tim Wilson, Historic Futures

  Tim describes how traceability works and what can be traced in supply chains.

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  Rebecca Calahan Klein, Sustainable Strategies

  Capturing Business Benefits

  Rebecca speaks on the risks and solutions in the cotton industry.

Labor Standards Initiative

Our Labor Standards Initiative focuses on respect for employee rights in the workplace and the elimination of abusive labor practices or “sweatshop labor”. Many companies utilize decentralized production networks in developing countries where labor is cheap. Along with increasing globalization this has produced a "race to the bottom" with poor working conditions, child labor, employee harassment and abuse, and unsustainable wages for factory workers. Many of these firms are learning that while they may save money by exploiting cheaper labor costs, they risk greater costs to their reputation by using this business model.

Our work toward improving compliance of basic labor standards emphasizes:

We are leading or participating in dialogues with the following companies on fair labor standards: Gap Inc., Nike, Nordstrom, McDonald's Corp., Time Warner, Wal-Mart Stores, and Walt Disney Co.