Ethical trading
Marks & Spencer has strong trading relationships across the world. We are a secular organisation embracing all cultures, nationalities, races and religions. We don’t support or align ourselves to any countries, nations, states, Governments, political parties or religious bodies and this approach is applied consistently to sourcing all of our products.
We source from over 70 countries worldwide, including China, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Kenya, Morocco, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the UK. We always clearly label which country all our products are made in to give our customers the opportunity to decide whether or not they want to buy from certain countries.
In 1999 we developed a set of Global Sourcing Principles in partnership with our suppliers. These Principles set down our requirements for suppliers to comply with all relevant local and national laws, particularly on: working hours and conditions, health & safety, rates of pay, terms of employment and minimum age of employment.
As well as labelling all of our products with the country of production, many food products have further information about raw materials. This in itself is a unique approach for a large-scale retailer. It means that customers have the necessary information if they want to avoid goods produced in a certain country because of political or social beliefs.
Click here for more information on our Global Sourcing Principals
As our relationship with a supplier develops, we expect them to improve working conditions in line with the more demanding standards promoted by the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI), a collaborative group of companies, trade unions and human rights groups set up by the UK Government. Marks & Spencer joined the ETI in 1999.
Click here for more information on the ETI
As part of Plan A, our five-year 'eco plan' we have committied to improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in our supply chains. We are working on the following:
• Introducing semi-announced on-site assessments of our suppliers, conducted within a three-week period, to ensure they are working to our Global Sourcing Principles at all times. These on-site assessments will have a greater level of involvement of worker representatives.
• Increasing the number of people based in the countries of production to follow up concerns identified by our assessment system within 12 months.
• Enabling suppliers to address difficult issues such as ‘living’ wage and working hours through collaborative networking, conferences and the launch of an Ethical Exchange website. Setting up best practice projects including at least three Ethical Model Factories and a worker’s rights training programme which can be extended across our supply chains.
• Extending the scope of our ethical trading assessments to include other parts of our supply chain.
• Trialling a confidential worker complaints mechanism for workers
• Introducing a ranking system for suppliers covering ethical trading performance by the end of 2008.
Our latest performance can be found in the How We Do Business Report. Click here to download a copy.
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