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2021 Sustainability Report
published 2022/08/01

Lawful employment for all employees

It is very important that all employees who make our products are lawfully employed. This means that they are employed in accordance with applicable regulations and that labor laws and social security laws are respected.

All of our producers are obligated to provide legal employment for their workers at all production sites. This obligation is as follows:

“Obligations to employees under labor or social security laws and regulations arising from the regular employment relationship shall not be avoided through the use of labor-only contracting arrangements, or through apprenticeship schemes where there is no real intent to impart skills or provide regular employment. Younger workers shall be given the opportunity to participate in education and training programs.”


Audits by independent auditors

An obligation in and of itself is not enough, of course. Therefore, all of our producers are regularly and independently audited by organizations such as Fair Wear (FW). Auditors carefully review whether employment contracts were properly terminated and whether employees are covered by social insurance. This is verified through interviews within and outside the production site and by reviewing documents.


We are improving the conditions for proper employment with these measures:

We are discussing the objections with our producers and working together to solve them. Deviations from the provisions governing employment contracts can usually be quickly resolved.


Ensuring that all employees have social insurance, however, is more difficult to achieve. In some cases, the lack of social insurance didn’t come from the employer, but from the employees themselves who could then collect the employer's contribution. It is very important to educate employees on this issue. The advantages of social security often haven’t been explained to employees. We expect our producers to provide their employees with information on this issue. In addition we are carrying out FW’s Workplace Education Program training program which also covers this issue.


Worker turnover at our producers’ facilities

Data on worker turnover rates is no longer collected during FW Audits. We therefore do not have any current figures for this.