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As part of Impactt’s launch of our Asia Pacific Network we are issuing a series of viewpoints identifying the most pressing labour standards issues in our network countries. Our first viewpoint comes from Juliet Edington our associate in Vietnam and focuses on the impacts of high inflation on workers’ livelihoods.
This year the issue of wages [More…]

The Centre for Sustainable Fashion report 2008, has called attention once again to sustainability within the fashion industry. The report follows a wave of recent media attention on the industry including; Panorama’s ‘Primark on the rack’ (BBC1, 9pm, 23 June 2008) and the BBC reality TV programme Blood, Sweat and T-shirts.

Today, on the 10th Anniversary of minimum wage legislation in the UK, the government have announced their intention to reform the rules on the use of tips to ‘top-up’ wages to minimum wage level.
We would like to congratulate the swift work of those who have campaigned on this issue, and have achieved a meaningful [More…]

 
A campaign launched by The Independent last week aims to highlight the treatment of waiters and waitresses working in some of the biggest name high-street restaurant chains. In an article entitled “Revealed: how the restaurant chains pocket your tips” The Independent exposed a series of unfair practices in the restaurant industry. The article showed [More…]

Following the Primark news stories and Panorama documentary a couple of weeks ago about the undeclared outsourcing and child labour in the Indian supply chains of Primark, we thought we would write a blog about homeworking and the challenges it represents, particularly in the Indian garment industry.
As we noted before homeworking is endemic in the [More…]

The World Bank’s ‘Doing Business‘ (DB) report is one of the Bank’s flagship initiatives to promote business-led economic growth. The annual report ranks countries on a variety of indices in order to compile a list of the countries with the most pro-business enabling environment. In the 2008 report, Singapore tops the index, whilst the [More…]

Following on from the focus on Primark’s ethical standards over the past couple of weeks, Tesco’s AGM today has meant attention has now turned to the supermarket’s commitment to ethical trade, with pressure being brought to bear on the retailer from several different directions.
Perhaps the most high profile Tesco critic of recent weeks is [More…]

In response to last night’s BBC Panorama exposing child labour in Primark’s supply chain, the Guardian asks “Is this the end for Primark?” We think reports of Primark’s imminent demise are greatly exaggerated. There certainly didn’t seem to be any lull in business when Impactt went to see the protest organized by War on [More…]

Following the news stories last week and speculation in the Ethical Trading community, the BBC is set to show its investigation into the ethical standards of Primark’s supply chain this Monday at 9pm. A potentially controversial trailer is available on YouTube:
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The footage shows [More…]

Primark has again attracted the attention of the ethical trading community today after the company’s announcement that it is severing ties with 3 suppliers because of child labour found in their supply chains. Information on the labour standards of some suppliers, gained during the filming of the BBC’s Panorama series, was passed on to the [More…]