Trying to secure decent working conditions : Do corporate social responsibility audits improve risk management in global garment supply chains?

Sammanfattning: The outsourcing of the manufacturing of garments to regions with lower production costs has raised concerns over labor rights violations. Retailers and brands have responded to this by introducing codes of conduct outlining minimum requirements for working conditions at their suppliers. Has companies’ work with codes of conduct within the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) framework managed to secure good working conditions, and if not, to drive improvements at the factory level?  This thesis examines the question empirically by analyzing code of conduct audits of garment factories conducted by Fair Wear Foundation (FWF), an independent non-profit multi-stakeholder organization. The data consist of audits of 229 sewing factories in Asia, Eastern Europe, and North Africa that supply European garment brands. Paper I analyses the non-compliances listed in the audit reports and whether factories audited several times by FWF improve over time. The results show that even rigorous multi-stakeholder factory audits have problems identifying violations of freedom of association and harassment of workers. Improvement over time could be seen between audits. However, these improvements were moderate, i.e. compliance increased by only 7–15% between audits.  Paper II examines chemical safety in the garment factories, an area where violations should be easy to identify and improvements are likely to be seen. The results show that 43% of the suppliers received remarks on chemical safety at the first audit. A model containing factors thought to be associated with better compliance was constructed including the number of previous audits, characteristics of the suppliers, and characteristics of the relationship between the brands and suppliers. The only statistically significant finding from this was that among factories audited ten or more times was there a clear increase in the number of factories receiving no remarks on chemical safety.