For our food business, we champion the best labour standards in our supply chains, acting responsibly towards the workers who make our products and being proud of how we behave towards the people we do business with.
Co-op is committed to supporting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and improving conditions in our supply chain. In line with this, our aim is to be the UK's leading retailer in this vital area, and we will continue to strenuously apply our 'Sound Sourcing Code of Conduct' across our supply base. We’re active members of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) and other key stakeholder groups - read more below.
Driving continuous improvements in working conditions in a global supply chain is a shared responsibility, between us and our suppliers. That’s why we have a ‘Supplier’s Guide to Ethical Trade’ setting out the standards we expect our suppliers to meet and a comprehensive supplier engagement programme.
We work with key partners and member groups, because we know we can’t act on our own.
We recognise that issues can be systematic and require long-term sustainable improvements to address root causes and drive change. There is no ‘quick fix’ but we firmly believe that collective effort will lead to significant and impactful results. Read more about our Human Rights Focus and work on the ground.
Co-op is a founding member of the ETI - an alliance of companies, trade unions and voluntary organisations working in partnership to improve the lives of workers across the globe who make or grow consumer goods. We actively participate in a wide range of ETI working groups to address systemic issues.
We use the Sedex platform, the world’s leading community for managing data on responsible sourcing, to manage our monitoring programme. The Co-op’s Ethical Trade Manager is an elected Member Director on the Sedex Board and we’re active participants in the Sedex Stakeholder Forum.
Co-op is a founding partner of Stronger Together, a multi-stakeholder collaborative initiative, whose purpose is to support organisations to tackle modern slavery within their businesses and supply chains.
The GLAA works in partnership to protect vulnerable and exploited workers and regularly shares insights at our conferences and regional forums to build the capacity of suppliers in tackling modern slavery.
We’ve supported the creation of FNET, a collaborative supplier driven initiative established to improve human rights in global food supply chains through a common approach to managing ethical trade. Co-op’s Ethical Trading Manager is an elected representative on FNET’s Strategic Advisory Group.
We are founding sponsors of the Responsible Recruitment Toolkit (RRT) to offer expert, pragmatic support to suppliers in order to achieve responsible recruitment in their supply chains.
Collaboration is at the very heart of our approach. We believe it is essential to developing sustainable solutions to issues that put workers’ interests first. We take this approach in the way we implement our monitoring programme, the way we work with our suppliers and peers to identify solutions to challenging issues, and the way we deliver our supplier engagement activities. Working with our suppliers to deliver long-term sustainable change, the key behaviours we champion are:
Proactivity
Ownership
Partnership
Since 2011, we’ve organised and ran 145 supplier ethical trade events, reaching thousands of suppliers and over 3,000 sites in countries across the globe. We are committed to working collaboratively to create long term sustainable solutions to issues and having a positive impact on all the workers in our supply chain.
With growing challenges and increasing long and complex supply chains, the need to build strong supplier relations based on trust and transparency is key to see long-term and sustainable improvements to working conditions in the supply base.
Our monitoring programme covers all tier 1 sites as mandatory and as part of our commitment to transparency in 2019, we are publishing our Supplier List for direct suppliers.
1,984 sites 6 continents 74 countries Over half a million workers†
100% of Tier 1 sites have a completed a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) and all Tier 1 high-risk sites are independently audited. We have mapped and risk assessed our supplier base beyond Tier 1 in high–risk categories such as produce and protein. When we find issues, we work with our suppliers to put things right. In our 2017/18 audits, 2,947 issues were raised (78% are completed, we’ve agreed a plan to complete 19% in 2019, and 3% are outstanding and have been escalated).
†862 Tier 1 and 1,122 beyond Tier 1. Data correct as reported in our Co-op Way Report 2018, where more information can be found.
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