Introduction

The Council on Economic Priorities Accreditation Agency has driven the development of Social Accountability 8000 (SA8000) a system which defines a set of auditable standards and an independent auditing process for the protection of workers'rights.
Based on conventions of the International Labour Organisation and related international human rights instruments - including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child -- SA 8000 is a common standard for companies seeking to guarantee the basic rights of workers. Sufficiently specific to be used to audit companies and contractors alike in multiple industries and countries, SA 8000 represents a major breakthrough: it is the first auditable social standard, and creates a process that is truly independent. (It is not a government project, nor is it dominated by any single interest group or constituency.) SA8000 provides a framework for the independent verification of the ethical production of all goods, made in companies of any size, anywhere in the world. It will provide a major opportunity for companies to demonstrate their commitment to best practice in the ethical manufacture and supply of the goods they sell. The system includes the following:
1. Set of universal auditable standards to be respected by companies adopting SA8000.
2 Set of standards on the Management system necessary for the successful implementation of SA8000.
3. A Guidance Document which will assist in the interpretation and implementation of SA8000.
4. The Council on Economic Priorities Accreditation Agency (CEPAA) to accredit qualified organisations to conduct the SA8000 audits of companies.
5. CEPAA a list of all organisations that are accredited as SA8000 auditors.

Who is CEPAA

CEPAA is an affiliate of the Council on Economic Priorities (CEP), a pioneer in the field of corporate social responsibility. Founded in 1969, CEP's mission is to provide accurate and impartial analysis to evaluate corporate social performance and to promote excellence in corporate citizenship. For nearly three decades, CEP has rated corporate performance to provide consumers and investors with information tools for change. CEP is best known for its Shopping for a Better World consumer guide. In early 1997, the Council on Economic Priorities Accreditation Agency (CEPAA) was established and convened an expert Advisory Board (see list, Appendix I) to assist in drafting standards to address workers' rights.
Representatives of unions, human rights and children's rights organisations, academia, retailers, manufacturers, contractors, as well as consulting, accounting, and certification firms are helping to develop a draft standard, Social Accountability 8000 (SA 8000).

The Problem

On the eve of the Fiftieth Anniversary (1998) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the case for worker rights is central to global advocacy on human rights: workers in both industrialized and developing countries seek safeguards against blatant abuses, while consumers press companies for responsible action. Companies, in turn, have developed codes of conduct -- policies that specify the conditions under which their products can be made. In their codes, both retailers and manufacturers commit to prohibit child labour, prison labour, and discrimination, and to promote basic rights. While the rise of the corporate code of conduct is a laudable trend, codes are becoming increasingly fragmented. Hundreds of codes of conduct call upon suppliers to manufacture products according to different workplace specifications -- a wasteful and inefficient practice. The effort to combat serious violations of workers' rights is thus hampered both by a lack of clear definitions of terms, and by a lack of consensus on the basic benchmarks in codes themselves. An even greater challenge is ensuring that codes are monitored effectively. For large companies with multiple production lines (such as Avon) and for companies with truly global production presence (such as Levi Strauss & Company), the challenge of monitoring thousands of suppliers throughout the world is significant. For smaller companies (such as Eileen Fisher) the cost of monitoring - whether training internal staff or contracting an outside firm to do the job -- presents a different, but equally weighty, obstacle. Internal monitoring itself is fraught with problems. Often, a company's own quality control staff are tasked with monitoring for human rights conditions. In industries where competition is intense and profit margins are razor thin, this staff can face pressure to overlook working condition problems if a supplier is reliable and delivers at low cost. Moreover, as quality control experts they are not necessarily well-versed in the language and customs of the local culture, making it difficult to detect related human rights problems. By its very nature, internal monitoring is non-transparent; the public has little access to the findings of a company's own monitoring exercises, and there is often little interaction between companies, auditors, and local grassroots organizations which document workplace problems based on worker interviews. Finally, internal monitoring procedures are not standardized across companies, rendering comparability of results difficult.

Social standards covered by SA8000

SA8000 considers key issues such as child labour, compensation, discrimination, forced labour, working hours, health and safety, and freedom of association, disciplinary practices It includes also a set of standards on the Management system necessary for the successful implementation of SA8000.
Detailed information on standards considered for each issue are contained in the "Guidance Document for SA8000" that can be requested at CEP (see addresses below).

Who can apply for certification

1) Companies seeking to independently verify their social record.
2) Companies seeking to independently verify their own social record and that of their contractors.
3) Contractors that produce goods for U.S. and European companies and wish to demonstrate to companies and consumers that they are treating workers fairly.
4) Development or multilateral organisations seeking to ensure that they procure from companies that are not exploitative
. Special cases:
1) Subsidiaries are not automatically certified as part of the headquarters' decision to apply for certification. For example, the decision on the part of a German company to certify to SA8000 does not include its subsidiaries, although subsidiaries can be cerified separately.
2) The Agricultural sector is not currently addressed under SA8000, although there may be a future SA8001 that addressed agricolture issues and/or a guidance document may be development to interpret these issues for the agricultural sector.
3) Extractive industries, such as oil and mining, are not covered under SA8000, although there may be an SA8002 that addresses these issues and/or guidance document may be develpment to interpret these issues for specific extractive industries.
4) Homework is not currently addressed, but future revisions of SA8000 will address this issue. This is a complex issue, because auditing a home can be considered a violation of privacy. To certify corporate conformance with SA8000, every facility seeking certification must be audited. Thus auditors will visit factories and assess corporate practice on a wide range of issues: child labour, health and safety, freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours and compensation. Auditors will also evaluate the state of a company's management systems, necessary to ensure ongoing conformance in each of these areas. The goal is continuous improvement, not exclusion. However, as more and more firms become certified to comply with SA8000, retailers and brand name manufacturers will be able to state their preference for (or decision to deal exclusively with) suppliers in compliance with SA8000. Factories will need to make improvements and abide by a timetable for verifying that problems have been addressed; they must document progress in problem areas. For example, a factory which employed exploitative child labor would need to document, maintain, and effectively communicate policies and procedures that addressed the needs of displaced children (i.e. those put out of work by effective monitoring itself) -- plus take preventive action to avoid a recurrence.
Certification and Accreditation of certification companies Companies interested in demonstrating that they and their suppliers are honoring Social Accountability standards will be able to have that fact certified, with the advice and involvement of NGOs. Certification itself is the process by which companies submit to an independent audit against a set of standards. For example, many manufacturing companies currently seek certification of their conformance to international quality standards (ISO 9000) and environmental management systems (ISO 14000). In this way they demonstrate their reliability to customers worldwide. The auditing will be made by certification companies accredited by CEPAA. Under SA 8000, certification firms will conduct an audit against SA 8000: if a facility meets the standard, it will earn a certificate attesting to its social accountability policies, management, and operations. Certification firms will need to be accredited to ensure that they are able to perform audits and to ensure these audits are carried out in a professional manner. CEPAA will thus set strict standards for accreditation of qualified organizations to certify against SA 8000 The success of the several large international certification companies which conduct those audits depends upon their reputation for integrity and consistency. Thus, those and other companies which may earn accreditation to conduct SA8000 audits have a great incentive to be professional and impartial. The CEPAA will mantain a list of accredited certification companies available to the public.

The Role of Interested Parties

Interested parties, such as NGOs and unions, have played a major role in SA8000 -- from the development of the Standard to the preparation of audits. They will be consulted by auditors before the audit takes place and will continue to have major responsibilities after certification and accreditation occur. Individual workers and non-governmental organizations have a significant role/say in the process--the right to appeal. Through an appeal to the certification body, a local organization can challenge the decision to certify a supplier (i.e., seek revocation of the certification) if they have evidence to support major violations. Indeed, if a local factory receives certification but you (or another interested party) were to have evidence that the factory was in violation of SA8000, a community-based organisation could appeal. As a result, firms will need to consider public recommendations very seriously. For its part, CEPAA will convene meetings of NGOs and encourage certification firms to offer comprehensive training in SA8000 auditing techniques for NGO staff. Likewise, any interested NGO can appeal to CEPAA to revoke the accreditation of a certification firm on the basis, for example, of evidence demonstrating a pattern of improper or incomplete audits or any other violation of the accreditation standard.

The Timetable

SA8000 was launched globally for consultation on October 15th 1997. Pilot audits have been undertaken to test the standards auditability in Mexico, Honduras, New York City and Pennsylvania with representatives from SGS-ICS, ACTS Testing Labs, KPMG and Deloitte & Touche. A further pilot is to be undertaken in Europe before the end of the year. The standard is now available for companies to begin working towards certificationand the first accredited certifications are anticipated to take place in the first quarter of 1998. The actual version of the standard will be in effect for approximately two years. It will be subject to appropriate updating periodically. The "guidance document" to SA8000 auditing and audit processes is very detailed; it will be updated yearly. It reflects all parties' experience with the system and contains improvements in system implementation. At the moment SGS and BVQI, two of the worlds largest certification companies have already committed to apply to become the first organisation to provide SA8000 audits to interested companies. The following companies have already made commitments to adopt SA8000: Toys R Us, will require its 5000 suppliers to adopt SA8000; Avon who will be implementing SA8000 in their 19 factories; Otto Versand (the largest mail order company in the world) will implement SA8000 with its key suppliers.

Global Sourcing Working Group

CEP has convened the Global Sourcing Working Group, a key vehicle for companies interested in implementing SA8000, auditing against SA8000, or consulting about SA8000. Composed of senior executives from major corporations and industry organisations, the Working Group seeks to enable leading businesses to source their production, which is increasingly global, in a manner which is socially responsible and accountable to an increasingly alert world opinion. Many companies already have impressive sourcing guidelines; others are in the process of developing codes. What brings them together is their willingness to address the human rights problems they encounter while sourcing internationally. The group facilitates an inter and intra-industry dialogue and acts as a liaison between the various actors involved in the debate, including corporations, governments, unions, non-governmental organisations and the consumer.

Appendix: CEPAA's Advisory Board

Abrinq (Brazil) Oded Grajew
Amalgamated Bank Jack Sheinkman
Amnesty International (UK) Sir Geoffrey Chandler
Association Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Miriam Donovan Lyons/Carlos Bauvard (Switzerland)
Avon Bill Kunz / Fitz Hilaire
Body Shop (UK) Alistair Jackson
Council on Economic Priorities Alice Tepper Marlin
Eileen Fisher David Zwiebel
Franklin Research & Development Simon Billenness
Grupo M, S.A (Dominican Republic) Joseph Blumberg
International Textile, Garment & Leather Neil Kearney
Workers Federation (Belgium)
KPMG Peat Marwick Ian Spaulding / Winthrop M. Swenson
National Child Labor Committee Jeffrey F. Newman / Dorianne Beyer
OTTO-Versand (GmbH & Co.), Dr. Johannes Merck
Hamburg (Germany)
Reebok Doug Cahn / Sharon Cohen
Sainsbury's (UK) Dr. Geoff Spriegel
SGS-International Certification Services Jeffrey L. Horner / John Brookes (Switzerland)
Toys "R" Us Tom DeLuca
University of Texas, Austin Prof. Ray Marshall.

CEP's addresses:

Council on Economic Priorities 83 Kinqsway WC2B 6SD London UK tel: 0044-171-8319420 fax: 0044-171-2420503 e-mail: leipzig123@aol.com
Council on Economic Priorities 30 Irving Place NY 10003 New York USA tel: 001-212-4201133 fax: 001-212-4200988 e-mail: info@cepaa.org

Home page