Press archive for the year 2019

The failure of TÜV and Co: Social audits protect companies and leave workers in the lurch

Social audits are designed to monitor and ensure compliance with human rights at work. However, as a control tool, this approach has failed. This is documented in the report ‘FIG LEAF FOR FASHION - How social auditing protects brands and fails workers’ of the Clean Clothes Campaign: The multi-billion-dollar, private-sector certification and audit industry systematically protects the reputation and profits of the contracting companies instead of the rights of workers.

Category: Unternehmensverantwortung

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Civil society in the Textile Alliance: Green button just another voluntary measure alongside a weak textile alliance

Berlin / Bonn. Today's presentation of the new ‘Green Button’ textile label by the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) uses civil society in the Textile Alliance to determine a critical location. The members of the civil society alliance criticise the fact that the Green Button, like the Textile Alliance, is only a voluntary measure. However, there is an urgent need for a law that makes human rights, environmental and anti-corruption due diligence mandatory for all companies. This law must form the basis for social, ecological and economic sustainability. Voluntary measures such as the Green Button and an improved textile alliance could build on this.

Category: Unternehmensverantwortung

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Civil society in the textile alliance criticizes companies' roadmaps as uninformative

Bonn / Berlin. The civil society organisations in the Textile Alliance criticise the roadmaps and progress reports of the member companies in the alliance. In its current form, these are not meaningful and poorly comparable. The roadmaps also showed that many companies are still at the very beginning when it comes to living wages. In addition, better working conditions in supply chains could be achieved if companies cooperate more frequently. On Monday, the Textile Alliance published roadmaps and progress reports of its members. In it, they show what measures they want to take in the field of human rights and ecology in textile production for the next year and whether planned measures were implemented in the previous year.

Category: Unternehmensverantwortung

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Live better without Primark - Creative promotions and dress swap party for the opening of the fashion giant

Bonn. The Fair Trade Town Bonn is richer by one consumer temple. On 13.08. the fashion giant Primark opens in front of the main station with cheap clothes on 8000m2. But really cheap here is only the business model: What the commodity actually costs people and the environment, the prices do not reflect. FEMNET and Bonn im Wandel call on the day of the opening to talk about mass consumption and the future of the city. More than 20 organisations are already supporting the campaign ‘Better living without Primark’.

The Alliance's appeal is against waste, pollution and human rights violations. With information stands and changing clothes, FEMNET and Bonn are showing that things can be different. From 10 a.m., visitors can expect a colourful program in Poststraße. Politicians, organisations and citizens are invited to join the “Live better without Primark-Talk” and talk about better concepts of urban development.

Category: FEMNET-Pressemitteilungen

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Civil society in the Textile Alliance appeals to companies: Shows more commitment to living wages!

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Bonn/Berlin. Living wages are a key element of decent work. In the countries of the Global South, however, a large proportion of employees cannot live humanely on hard-earned wages. This also applies, and in particular, to employees in the textile and clothing industry. The Alliance for Sustainable Textiles, founded in 2014 on the initiative of Federal Development Minister Dr. Gerd Müller, has started to change this. The civil society organisations in the Textile Alliance are now calling on all members to follow their commitment to action and to step up their efforts to pay living wages.

Category: Existenzlohn jetzt! Faire Löhne für Textilarbeiter*innen

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