I just participated in the first seminar at Loyola Law School forum on Consumer Social Responsibilities. The issues of all the areas of “man’s treatment of their fellow man” were discussed, over an
8-hour program.
The attendees were the CEO’s, COO’s, CFO’s of large brand name manufacturers, retailers, and Managing Directors of large law firms, and law students.
The seminar covered the many issues domestic in the USA, and the State laws that have been put into place, and of course the offshore importing of Textile/Apparel products globally.
Bangladesh, India, China, the Sub-Saharan African nations involved in the AGOA Free Trade Agreement, and all the other countries within the Free Trade Agreements of the USA, were discussed.
The subject of ‘Made in USA’ was also discussed, as this is becoming a large marketing tool.
Taking 8 hours of discussion and trying to summarize in this article would not do justice to the findings and information of the seminar, but I will try to bring forward a few strong thoughts.
Many import buyers for the well-known name brands, and retailers have “Codes of Conduct” in place stating their labor compliance ethics, and conduct of the facilities they are contracting with to produce their products.
Will this protect them from law suits and huge loss of profits, and possible damage to their name?
The answer was, and still is NO!
These firms are hiring in-house attorneys, to protect them, from vendors that do not comply!
[bleft] “CSR is becoming a defined practice of law, and is getting transparent with the newest communication tools of the social network. One can be damaged by non-factual information on these Blogs, Facebook, Instagram and other non-legislative forms of media to millions of subscribers worldwide and they are the consumers.” [/bleft]
Example after example was presented of multi-million dollar name brands that are no longer in business in the USA marketplace due to truthful or NOT truthful negative publicity of who manufactured their designs and country where they were made.
Both manufacturers and countries can lose very large economic revenues.
There are many comparatively new organizations, in the teaching, training of their members, as well as monitoring firms trying to oversee the Codes of Conduct their clients have in place.
“People who live in glass houses, should not throw stones”, therefore this seminar covered the “Sweat Shop” issues in the USA domestic apparel manufacturing arena also.
This CSR is becoming a defined practice of law, and is getting as transparent, with the newest communication tools of the social network.
One can be damaged by non-factual information on these Blogs, Facebook, Instagram and other non-legislative forms of media to millions of subscribers worldwide and they are the consumers.
The statement “Buyer’s beware” applying to true actual value of a product now includes, to be aware of where the product has been made.
This is a two-way highway. Country’s laws of a sovereign nation with its cultural acceptable laws may not fit with the buyer’s Code of Conduct.
It is not for the buyer to try and change the country’s laws even if the manufacturer agrees to comply; it is the buyers right not to place the order.
Politicians of world organizations are the ones to seek global acceptable Codes of Conduct for the worker, it must be the individual owners contracting production, to make the decision, are they willing to place orders where CSR litigation could very quickly put themselves and many others out of business?