After attending the OECD Forum on Due Diligence and Garment sector held from 19th February to 22 February in Paris our ESR Laura Treviño-Lozano shares some reflections about due diligence in public procurement of garment and footwear supplies.
Retailers play a role for remedy
Public buyers often buy from retailers, and retailers play a role in simplifying access to remedy. If a retailer has 800 brands, such was the case of one of the participant retailers, there is no way that a trade union will know how each of those 800 mechanisms work. A role could be to facilitate access to remedy by having one mechanism, one platform of retailers that could receive complaints from all the brands rather than having each brand with different mechanisms. This can be done when the retailers are big, yet it seems hard to think that this will be the case for a small shop that resells products from different brands, which is often the case for public procurement.
Transparency on its own is meaningless, but it is a condition for meaningful due diligence
For example cotton is a key component of many of the supplies that public buyers purchase like uniforms. Frequently, companies, who play as contractors, do not buy directly from the farmers. Supply chains are very complex and it is hard to track down where does this cotton is actually coming from. Therefore traceability is of paramount importance. By itself it can have little impact, but when used, for example in public procurement to bring accountability for the contractors and their supply chains it can be a powerful tool. Public buyers can foster traceability through their procurement criteria, for example first as an award criteria to favour those contractors who have more suppliers identified in their supply chains. Then, once the market matures, it can be even asked as a contract performance condition requesting contractors to disclose to the public buyer the address of the place of origin of the cotton and of the factory where the garment they are buying is manufactured.
There needs to be leverage
Leverage was frequently highlighted by the participants. In the context of public procurement, it means that public buyers need to have leverage over their contractors. But also, it means that contractors need to have leverage over their subcontractors and suppliers. Therefore, there is a big opportunity for collaborating and joining forces as public buyers and as private companies who often share the same suppliers in this sector. Our ESR Felippe Vilaca’s research addresses how to collaborate for sustainable public procurement.
Certifications are not silver bullets. While certifications can be helpful, they have also a high risk of failure
Certifications are often resorted by brands and retailers to ensure there is compliance with labour rights in their supply chains. They often use them in their due diligence processes. On the other hand certifications and labels are likely used by public buyers to verify that their contractors and their supply chains are compliant with ILO conventions. Yet there are risks to consider when requesting certifications to ensure contractors and supply chains compliance.
Sheela Ahluwalia, Director of Policy and Advocacy at Transparentem highlighted some of the risks that certifications have that should be considered by public buyers when using certifications:
- Certifications have a high risk of falsification, fraud or deception. We know that the Rana Plaza buildings were certified, even so they collapsed.
- There is no liability for the auditor in case they are not accurate or true and there is no regulation about this
- They can be important tool for workers, if they have the right mechanisms to complain a problem. If not rightly done, they can put workers at risk
- In audits workers will only speak if there are reliable and accessible third party grievance mechanisms. (Where public buyers can foster to offer or enhance)
- There is a trend of increased reliance on private certification and audits to monitor and verify compliance which we should not forget this should be done by the governments
In sum, retailers are potential facilitators of access to remedy, but this is not always the case. Transparency is a necessary condition for meaningful due diligence, but we need to start thinking about what information has to be disclosed, and who will have access to that information. Both contracting bodies and contractors need to have leverage over their suppliers, yet we need to provide other alternatives when this is not the case. Finally, the widespread use of certifications has to be rethought because they can sometimes support social washing.
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