Excerpts from The Supply Chain Imperative
By Dale Neef
Published by the American Management Association
Choosing Performance & Process Standards, pg 142-144 (3 pages on us, followed by a 2 page SA8000 case study -- Apparel Avenue --, then a page on ETI, then on to environmental standards):
"Among these, SA8000 is probably the most important workers' rights performance standard to emerge to date, and is clearly destined to evolve into the most widely accepted format for addressing company issues around its social performance....
a response to the need for companies to have access to a common, standardized framework for good labor management and workplace environment questions, not only for company-owned facilities, but also latterly to help address labor and employment issues in developing-world factories....
In many ways, SA8000 is both an international human resources standard and a verification tool...
But equally important, implementing the standard means adopting a management system that is designed to help companies enforce these rights and provide workers with education and training on modern management techniques...
For that reason, a standard such as SA8000 itself can serve as a good foundation document and guideline for helping companies to create an ethical supply chain program such as the one we are describing...
Aware of the problems inherent in designing a "one size fits all" approach, in developing the SA8000 standard, SAI solicited input from a variety of industry groups, activists, labor rights organizations, and specialists in certification and auditing, and has designed a framework that is both standardized and yet flexible enough to take into account cultural and legal differences of various labor markets around the world...
In many ways, SA8000...like any formal Deming-like management system...inevitably helps a factory identify quality and process "defects" and make productivity improvements...
{Quote from Fitz}...
In fact, Business Week has gone so far in its praise of the standard to assert that SA8000 was: "a potential breakthrough not just on sweatshops but on common labor standards for the global economy as a whole"...
Unlike most other standards, however, SA8000 has bitten the bullet and requires companies that adopt the framework to demonstrate compliance by submitting to independent audits, completed by third-party certification groups trained in the SA8000 methodology
{Paragraph on weakness that can be a member but still have not gotten facilities certified}...
Whatever its limitations in the area of membership versus compliance, the standard is quickly becoming an important force in the emerging social and labor standards market...
Signatories include such well-known names as Avon, Dole, Eileen Fisher, Otto Versand, Tex Line and Toys R Us."
In addition, Chapter 18 is: Pulling It All Together: The Switcher/Prem Case Study. Pages 249-261.
Last chapter, 19, states page 263: "First, as with the quality movement, implementing a common standard has many advantages over starting a program from scratch. A great deal of consultation and thought has gone into SA8000, AA 1000, ISO 14001, the ETI, and the GRI, and although some of these initiatives still need to be streamlined and made applicable to individual industries, they are, nonetheless, a valuable set of tools for developing a company ethical supply chain framework. Designed to be flexible and interactive with each other, these standards and guidelines are invariable more thorough, and easier to implement, than reinventing the wheel by designing a code or standard independently."