Material World Common Assesment
Company i'm reviewing: Ecco
Sweatshops are ghastly places where people are set to work to make the every day super-branded things that we buy. And you'd think that most of would at least pay a bit of attention to them, even if we knew about them...WRONG!
Code of Conduct (4 Choices)1. ECCO respects equal opportunities and supports abolishment of discrimination in the workplace.
2. ECCO provides training, education and further development of human resources on all levels.
3. ECCO supports the UN Convention on the rights of the Child
4. ECCO supports respects and has a proactive approach to the protection of internationally defined human rights. singapore
5) Do they follow the code?
1. ECCO respects equal opportunities and supports abolishment of discrimination in the workplace – yes, because all of the factories are jurisdicted by the human rights laws, but in the independent factories, the jobs are not payed according to minimal wage in that country and people don't always stay polite.
2. ECCO provides training, education and further development of human resources on all levels – Ecco has unions and do not allow child labour, but in independent factories, there could be some prejudice against the workers getting other jobs through education.
3. ECCO supports the UN Convention on the rights of the Child – Ecco’s own factories would ban child labour but the independent factories could employ children to amount to less production cost, increasing the profit for the factory
4. ECCO supports respects and has a proactive approach to the protection of int.ernationally defined human rights – Human rights are basic and in modern MEDC’s and proper workplaces the rights are followed fine. But in sweatshops, literally all of the rules are ignored, and independent factories can get away with more than official factories could, way more.
6) Ethical Points
In terms of finding words of protest that have obvious prejudice against super brands, when I searched up complaints on the leather brand Ecco, all I got was that the shoes crack if put away for too long (and this happens to all leather shoes for some reason). There were no complaints of sweatshops, child or forced labour and all the information points towards the fact that they do not have any sweatshops as they own all parts from cow to shoe. They do of course take advantage of the lower minimal wage in countries like Indonesia and China, but the employees are given health insurance and other basic company’s perks that you would never get in a sweatshop. As Ecco owns 80% of their factories, they are subject to local and international workplace inspectors, who if at the first sign of breaking the human rights, would destroy the company’s reputation and it would be all over the news and internet. But 20% of the factories related to ecco are independent but under license and are also subject to these laws, but there is always the occasional factory owner out there who would like to employ children or enforce woman to decrease production price. This has not happened ( at least as far as the media and web pages go), so I agree that all of the online information supports the fact that they follow the code of conduct and their shoes are really good quality (unless you don’t wear them for a bit then they become brittle) but they still do get away with achieving cheap labour in LEDC's because of freetrade. But at least the information shown tells us that they are ethical to their workers.
7) Supporting Information:
As previously stated, ecco owns every one of their production and manufacturing lines (except for the factories, but they still own just above 80% of them) so this makes them one of the few companies that actually uses a process called vertical integration. vertical integration is when a company owns all of points along the line from the cow to the shoe. an added bonus to this is that they don't need to find the cheapest manufacturing plants round the world and ship them everywhere, they can just send it round to their local factories and tanneries using less transportation energy and saving the environment. "A pair of ECCO shoes I purchased at Ross (the outlet store) at $60, and it was price $179 at retail store" this quote off a website tells us (and i have multiple others to back it up) that the shop selling any TNC products will rip off people who have money to keep profits high.
8) Conclusion:
All in all I think that ecco is a very ethical company and mostly (remembering those 20% independent factories) owns all the pints along the way to make a shoe. this proves that there will be hardly any problems with any employment and workplace issues that make the place become a slavehouse. Ecco are clean
