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Following the publication of Impactt’s 10th Anniversary Report, “Progress Not Perfection“ last year, we are delighted to publish our first annual report “Getting Smarter: Ethical Trading in the Downturn“.

High energy prices, food inflation, financial turmoil, recession and consumers tightening their belts – 2008 proved to be a challenging year.  The situation poses obvious but important questions for companies: how should they tackle the challenges of ethical trade and labour standards in a downturn?  Is work on upholding labour standards an optional extra to be discarded when times are hard?  Or have ethical issues moved to a point where they are considered core to operations?

Economic hard times present difficulties to all of us, from the CEOs of corporations to buyers, suppliers and the workers along the supply chain.  It is more important than ever to ensure that work on labour standards earns its place at the table, by demonstrating that products and services delivered by workers who have decent jobs provide better quality and value to businesses and consumers than those made by workers whose rights are infringed.  The challenge for everyone working in ethical trade is to develop ingenious and cost effective solutions which achieve the win-win of better business and better jobs all along the supply chain.  The task is getting harder, we need to get smarter.

Impactt strives to find creative ways to improve working conditions in supply chains to bring clear business benefits; we have developed case studies on 4 key projects from the year that do just that:

• Bangladesh Ethical Factory: A model for sustainably increasing wages and reducing working hours.
• Practical Child Labour Solutions: Building consensus on effective child labour remediation – getting working children back to school.
• Building Local Capacity: Expanding the capacity of local organisations to work with employers and employees to improve labour practices.
• Better Buying: Integrating ethical trade into the core operations of business.

The report also presents the findings from Impactt’s assessments of 98 production sites during the year to August 2008, which draws on testimony from 1,500 workers in 11 countries.

We hope the report provides interesting and inspiring reading, we look forward to your comments.