News & Press Releases - CSR & Supply Chain Law

Joint press release by FEMNET e.V. and Public Eye

Zurich/Lausanne, Bonn. FEMNET and Public Eye have jointly analyzed the reporting of fashion companies whose products are certified with the "Green Button" of the German Ministry of Development. The sobering result one year after the start of the Green Button: Public reporting by many companies is inadequate. Standard and testing process have shortcomings, so that the Green Button does not deliver in practice, which many of them promise: Clothes and textiles produced without exploitation or pollution. Sealers and seal holders urgently need to improve.

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If the group does not move forward, the shareholders can show it the way. For example, on the occasion of the Hugo Boss Annual General Meeting, shareholder and FEMNET Chairman Dr Gisela Burckhardt calls for the creation of a ‘fund for living wages’ for the group’s seamstresses in its supply chains. At the latest in times of the corona crisis, it is now becoming apparent that without sustainable income structures, the survivability of the clothing industry and its employees is at stake.

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© cini.angela - Depositphotos.com

Press release of civil society in the Textile Alliance

Seven years after the factory collapse of Rana Plaza, textile workers are once again plunging into a crisis due to COVID-19. Right now, the Alliance for Sustainable Textiles must prove itself as an authority for safeguarding human rights responsibility, demands civil society in the Textile Alliance. While brand and retail companies are responding to the COVID-19 crisis with far-reaching cancellations from their suppliers, textile workers in the producing countries are suffering extreme economic hardship due to the loss of income. If the regular wage falls away, which often does not reach the end of the month anyway, there are no social security systems in place.

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© Devi Adamo 2019

FEMNET has published the most important results of a new study in German

Textile companies have made great progress in recent years in disclosing information about their supply chains. This is shown in a report published in December 2019 by an alliance of trade unions, human rights groups and labour rights initiatives, including the Clean Clothes Campaign.
The short version has been translated into German by FEMNET. The report is an update of the 2017 company survey.

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Social audits are designed to monitor and ensure compliance with human rights at work. However, as a control tool, this approach has failed. This is documented in the report ‘FIG LEAF FOR FASHION - How social auditing protects brands and fails workers’ of the Clean Clothes Campaign: The multi-billion-dollar, private-sector certification and audit industry systematically protects the reputation and profits of the contracting companies instead of the rights of workers.

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Berlin / Bonn. Today's presentation of the new ‘Green Button’ textile label by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) uses civil society in the Textile Alliance to determine a critical location. The members of the civil society alliance criticise the fact that the Green Button, like the Textile Alliance, is only a voluntary measure. However, there is an urgent need for a law that makes human rights, environmental and anti-corruption due diligence mandatory for all companies. This law must form the basis for social, ecological and economic sustainability. Voluntary measures such as the Green Button and an improved textile alliance could build on this.

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Berlin / Bonn. Today's presentation of the new ‘Green Button’ textile label by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) uses civil society in the Textile Alliance to determine a critical location. The members of the civil society alliance criticise the fact that the Green Button, like the Textile Alliance, is only a voluntary measure. However, there is an urgent need for a law that makes human rights, environmental and anti-corruption due diligence mandatory for all companies. This law must form the basis for social, ecological and economic sustainability. Voluntary measures such as the Green Button and an improved textile alliance could build on this.

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Bonn / Berlin. The civil society organisations in the Textile Alliance criticise the roadmaps and progress reports of the member companies in the alliance. In its current form, these are not meaningful and poorly comparable. The roadmaps also showed that many companies are still at the very beginning when it comes to living wages. In addition, better working conditions in supply chains could be achieved if companies cooperate more frequently. On Monday, the Textile Alliance published roadmaps and progress reports of its members. In it, they show what measures they want to take in the field of human rights and ecology in textile production for the next year and whether planned measures were implemented in the previous year.

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