Supplier Performance

Health and Safety – is our absolute priority, and the average score now stands at a B rating.

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  • Remediation topics are vast with no underlying trends, and most are easily to resolve, eg missing certifications for generators and boilers and Inconsistent use of protective clothes and machine guards.
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  • Seven out of eight of our Bangladesh factories are participants of the Bangladesh Accord Initiative. Two have completed all remediation, one is close to completing, and the balance four are in progress and being monitored.
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• Decent Working Hours – continues to be a low performing area for the industry as a whole, and applicable to both China and Bangladesh - with an average score of D.
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  • Capacity planning for 10 hours rather than 8 is a common root cause, which although legal, does mean that there are incidences when workers have to stay beyond the legal 2 hours. All evidence would indicate that the overtime is voluntary, and there is no evidence of registered complaints. However, the view is that this needs to be further investigated.
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  • It is widely known within the industry that a significant driver of overtime is the buying practice of many fashion brands, who push hard for fast delivery. Whilst we at AS Colour can take accountability for the working hours of our own designated lines, we cannot for those of their other customers. This is, therefore, an example of where a collaborative approach could be more effective.
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• Social Management Systems and Cascade Effect – is another area needing improvement, where the average score is D.
  • The most common issue is here that suppliers may have policies in place around our Code of Conduct, however, they are either not fully executing (for example they have issues around overtime) or are not communicating them throughout their supply chain. This is a key performance area we will be focusing on, and links into our transparency program.
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• Workers Involvement and Protection – is another critical area we intend to drive. Currently, the average rating is a C.
  • Whilst 100% of our factories do have grievance mechanisms the lower rating is a result of the varying degrees of effectiveness. Additionally, some suppliers are not engaging workers when developing occupational health and safety policies. In many cases, the workers will be more knowledgeable than management of any risks in their working environment, and therefore it is essential their voices are heard.
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• Decent Wage – here the suppliers have been scoring C and upwards with some A ratings.
  • The key objective of the audit questions is to verify that the legal minimum wage, (or industry standard wage approved through collective bargaining), is respected by our factories. The debate over the minimum wage versus a living wage is a global and political issue as relevant in NZ as in developing countries, and one that AS Colour unilaterally will not be able to resolve. For this reason, we continue to review and develop our strategy and goals around Fair Remuneration and are taking the following courses of action :
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  • PROMOTING EFFECTIVE WORKER PARTICIPATION GROUPS. 
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  • We believe the ultimate goal must be to ensure freedom of association and effective worker participation groups to enable their own collaborative bargaining. Our strategy is therefore to provide continuous improvement across these platforms. Currently, 100% of our first tier factories have some form of worker participation group with grievance mechanisms. Our focus is on making these groups more effective.
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  • GATHERING INFORMATION ON REGIONAL SPECIFIC LIVING WAGES. 
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  • Whilst there is no universal guidance on how to calculate a living wage, our research has lead us to the Anker Methodology as recommended by a number of advocacy groups including Amfori . We are now requesting all our factories calculate their workforces’ decent standard of living. To date, 50% of our factories have submitted this information as part of their continuous improvement program. Our goal for 2019 is to achieve 100%. This information is then used to understand current efforts to provide workers with a fair remuneration and the gaps that need to be overcome in order to do so. The information is also used to identify any significant risks in the supply chain which will then be used to shape our ongoing order placement and sourcing strategy.
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  • OPENING SUPPLIER DIALOGUE. 
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  • Through encouraging an open dialogue with our producers we have been able to have our first discussions around open book costings and root cause analysis. Through understanding factory cost breakdowns we can firstly ensure that price negotiations do not negatively impact labour costs, but secondly it raises awareness of the impact of increased labour costs on final costings. These discussions have also brought us to a collaborative assessment of the root causes of costs and blockers to increasing salaries. We have asked our suppliers to evaluate our working practices to ensure we are operating as a responsible business enterprise.
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  • COLLABORATING WITH INDUSTRY AND ADVOCACY GROUPS.
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  • AS Colour has recently joined the global Amfori organization which we believe will assist in guiding us through such complex issues as living wage as well as allow us the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other international brands working with our supply base.
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  • DEVELOPING INTERNAL TRAINING.
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  • In September we had our first internal training around the significance of understanding Living Wage and the risks to our business if suppliers systematically fail to provide fair remuneration to their workforce. Following the suppliers review of our business practices, we will be further developing our training programs.

Click here to view our Ethical Production Guide.