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15 - Private standards in the North – effective norms for the South?

from PART III - The authority and effectiveness of actors and standards

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 January 2010

By
Eva Kocher
Edited by
Anne Peters ,
Lucy Koechlin ,
Till Förster  and
Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel
Anne Peters
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Lucy Koechlin
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Till Förster
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
Gretta Fenner Zinkernagel
Affiliation:
Universität Basel, Switzerland
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Summary

Introduction

Social standards and CSR policies

The globalised world offers companies opportunities to capitalise on global labour markets: production can be organised globally in proprietary businesses or by means of an elaborate supply chain. However, the transnational organisation of business activities can also entail substantial risks. Both the press and the public have increasingly taken an interest in events that occur in far-off parts of the world and these incidents can turn into risks in consumer markets in industrialised nations. Just imagine the following scenario: the Clean Clothes Campaign claims that, according to accounts by female workers, a Central American textile producer was locking pregnant women in the cafeteria as punishment for failing to reach their production targets. The factory was closed in 2005 after being unionised. Whilst these allegations are being heard in the courts of the Central American country in which they occurred (in cases brought by, among others, the local trade union), they have simultaneously reached the attention of the German public, because the textile producer in question supplies a sportswear company based in Germany. Human rights groups such as the Clean Clothes Campaign (but also the local union and a local women's association) have invoked, among other things, the German sportswear company's code of conduct, which guarantees compliance with national laws, protection against discrimination and freedom of association.

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Non-State Actors as Standard Setters , pp. 409 - 430
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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