Fair Wear Foundation, the German Partnership for Sustainable Textiles (PST) and the Dutch Agreement on Sustainable Garments and Textile (AGT) have joined hands to improve access to remedy for workers in garment factories of their member brands.
From now on, Seidensticker, Esprit, s.Oliver Group, G-Star and HEMA will use Fair Wear’s complaint mechanism in garment factories in Vietnam and India, next to the 130 Fair Wear brands.
The five brands are either members of the German PST or signatories to the AGT. Workers in the supply chain of these brands will now have access to Fair Wear helplines to address labour rights violations.
It’s the first time that Fair Wear makes its complaints system accessible to brands that signed up with other like-minded organisations.
More on this, Margreet Vrieling Associate Director, Fair Wear, said “Joining forces is an important step towards providing more workers with better access to remedy and facilitate cooperation amongst brands.”
The participating brands and PST and AGT see it as a great opportunity to complement the ongoing work towards providing access to remedy.
“Our signatory brands already have channels in place and since 2017, AGT operates a grievance and complaints mechanism used for issues which cannot be solved by involved parties themselves,” says Pierre Hupperts, Chairman of the AGT.
By cooperating, the three organisations aim to increase the impact of the complaint helplines and to align existing structures. Together with civil society organisations such as FEMNET and Arisa, as well as local stakeholders, the MSIs and brands will evaluate the use of the Fair Wear mechanism and discuss needs and ideas towards a jointly usable system.
“This is an important step towards scaling effective complaints mechanisms through cooperation. We’re looking forward to the results of this first project phase and are already working on additional scaling options to provide more workers with access to complaints and remedy systems,” says Jürgen Janssen, head of the PST Secretariat.
