Stakeholder engagement

Working closely with external partners featured strongly in much of what Primark achieved during 2010. Highlights include the following:

• In Bangladesh, 16 of the factories from which we buy have been working with Nari Uddug Kendra (NUK), an NGO that focuses on women’s rights. Together, Primark and NUK have provided training for factories on how to manage workers more fairly, and educate them about their rights. In 2009, 974 workers received training through this programme.
• In China and Bangladesh, Primark began projects that aim to create long-term, sustainable improvements in labour standards and provide living wages for people. Several visits had been undertaken to both countries in 2009, to identify suppliers, factories and local implementation partners including NGOs, worker organisations, employer associations, and technical experts.
• In southern India we are working at grassroots level with an NGO to understand and address the challenges faced by workers in communities where Primark’s products are made. The programme includes surveys to identify workers, families and children at risk, as well as providing a counselling service and helpline for people. A core part of this initiative is worker education and we have established groups that look at issues from hygiene and personal development to gender equality and workplace rights.
• Through Primark’s membership of the ILO and International Finance Corporation (IFC) Better Work programme, we engage and collaborate with retailers and labour experts within countries to provide localised supplier training, remediation and worker engagement. Primark’s supplier factories in Vietnam are part of the initiative, and we support the efforts and plans of the ILO to implement the programme in other countries from which we source.
• This year Primark joined Business for Social Responsibility (BSR), a CR organisation with over 250 corporate members. Primark is an active member of the BSR Mills and Sundries working group, a coalition of clothing retailers which looks at ethical and environmental performance within spinning mills, dye-houses and sundry manufacturers. BSR also worked with Primark on identifying key trends in labour migration in China, and how Primark suppliers could mitigate potential labour shortages through good human resource management. Finally, we are proud that Primark is BSR’s partner in Bangladesh for the health enabled returns programme, a groundbreaking initiative that provides healthcare and education for women in factories.

As a member of the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) Primark continued to be actively involved in a number of ETI groups in 2010 relating to the following: General Merchandise, Homeworking Principles of Implementation, Annual Report, Purchasing Practices, and China. Primark also increased its collaborative efforts with other brands, via membership of cross-brand forums in a number of countries as well as more informal joint efforts on supplier remediation. As 95% of the factories that supply Primark also supply other retailers, this joined-up approach is one of the best ways to achieve progress.

In South Africa, a high proportion of the land from which Illovo sources sugar cane for its mills is subject to land claim. This includes land owned by private growers, Illovo and that of indigenous farmers who have purchased farms from Illovo as part of the company’s pioneering land redistribution programme, which commenced in the mid-1990s. This programme, hailed at the time by the Department of Agriculture as ‘one of the most progressive developments in South African agriculture’, remains strongly viable, with a 95% success rate. Those farms put up for sale by unsuccessful growers have been purchased by their neighbours who have consequently doubled up their operations and cane supply.

In order to ensure the sustainability of cane supply from land that faces being transferred to historically disadvantaged first-generation sugar cane growers, Illovo has set up multi-stakeholder land reform forums. These forums are made up of representatives from the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, Department of Land Affairs, Department of Agriculture and Environmental Affairs and local governments associated with the various sugar cane supply areas, as well as industry stakeholder organisations, such as the South African Cane Growers’ Association and the Inkezo Land Company. Illovo’s approach has since been adopted by the government as a model for managing land claims elsewhere.

In Swaziland, the Lower Usuthu Smallholder Irrigation Project, which will supply the Ubombo sugar mill with additional sugar cane, necessitated the relocation of some communities. However, before this was done, extensive consultation through the government was undertaken with local community members. This ensured that the relocation was carried out with due sensitivity to the communities’ material, social and cultural considerations and with the communities’ approval. Relocation was carried out with the support of the Swazi and EU governments. This is in line with our commitment to ensuring that our operations are considered to have a positive impact by the affected communities.