Zhu Hai, a factory town,
along China’s Pearl Delta,
is feeling an awful lot like Vancouver
right now, cloudy, misty and chilly. The
city aside from its Pacific Coast
like weather is undergoing a massive
construction to connect itself to Hong Kong
via a 50 km stretch of bridges and tunnels. To
put this span in perspective, the longest suspended portion is 23 km which is 46
times the length of Vancouver’s Lion Gate Bridge
(.4 km)
or for our American friends, almost ten times “Golden Gate Bridge end
to end. But forget this trivia, the bridge is more than just physically tying two great
cities, it’s linking the old industrial economy of Zhu Hai to the knowledge intensive one of Hong Kong.
Our supplier in Zhu Hai is
tying its compliance program to the future.
First it’s decided
against a program of audits every
six months as this doesn’t
accomplish a whole lot other than repeatedly
remind every one of the same
challenges. Instead,
it’s taken compliance and put it
where it be belongs, in the operations of the factory. In this facility, the top manager and his human resources supervisor “own” the
compliance function. In theory this
makes ethical sourcing more real as it is driven
by individuals.
Authority alone is not sufficient to making
factories good. There needs
to be involvement by workers. In
Shenzhen, our contract facility has adopted a worker/management/NGO approach to
compliance. In this model, workers and
management under the supervision of
the not-for-profit Fair Labour Association and
MEC, identify the problems on the
plant and together with external
expertise if needed, work out the solutions. This collaborative approach to compliance fosters
more balance as the views of the workers are given equal weight to those of management.
Many factories and brands
complain about the traditional audit
every-six-months approach because it doesn’t
lead to substantive change. In fact it ties up time and money. In addition, a traditional audit doesn’t capture the
cause of a problem or its depth. For the
most part it only provides an indication
of a problem. Subsequent exploratory
work is needed
to validate and
quantify the non compliance at hand.
Nevertheless, an audit is important. It’s able to flag if kids are employed or if
work conditions are egregious to the extent that serious harm is immediately
likely. A traditional audit is an assurance
and depending on its findings, can bring comfort to buyers and consumers.
Zhu Hai is changing. It’s gone from a fishing village to a labour
intensive industrial center in a
mere span of 30 years. Today, it’s embarked on a path to become a knowledge
intensive hub like Silicon Valley. Connecting itself to Hong
Kong will help make this goal real.
Compliance is also undergoing a change.
Twenty years ago, compliance was only about auditing
and re-auditing. Today
it’s more sophisticated. It's become a part of factory
operations, where management and
workers identify critical issues and co-develop remedies. This is more sustainable than traditional audits
and its a bridge to the future of compliance.
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