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.
We’re committed to supporting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and improving conditions in our supply chain. In line with this, we’re looking to be the UK's leading retailer, and will continue to apply our Sound Sourcing Code of Conduct across our supply base. We’re also 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. That’s why we have a ‘Supplier’s Guide to Ethical Trade’ setting out the standards we want 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.
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.
The world’s leading community for managing data on responsible sourcing.
We are a founding partner of this 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.
The ALP is the specialist trade association promoting responsible recruitment for labour providers.
Collaborative supplier driven initiative established to improve human rights in global food supply chains through a common approach to managing ethical trade.
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
Over the last five years we’ve held nearly 130 supplier ethical trade events reaching thousands of suppliers from 2500 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 supplier 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.
1,873 sites 6 continents 69 countries Over half a million workers†
100% of Tier 1 sites with SAQ complete and all Tier 1 high-risk sites were independently audited. We 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 2016/17 audits, 2,975 issues were raised (70% are completed, we’ve agreed a plan to complete 26% in 2018, and 4% are outstanding and have been escalated).
†891 Tier 1 and 982 beyond Tier 1. Data correct as reported in our Co-op Way Report 2017, where more information can be found.
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