Social & Labour Convergence Program launching in India

SLCP is an initiative led by the world’s leading manufacturers, brands, retailers, industry groups, inter-governmental organisations, service providers and civil society organisations to eliminate audit fatigue by replacing current proprietary tools with a standard-neutral Converged Assessment Framework. The mission of the SLCP is to improve working conditions by allowing resources that were previously designated for compliance audits to be redirected towards the improvement of social and labour conditions.

SLCP benefits manufacturing facilities by addressing audit fatigue by reducing the number of social audits. It facilitates measuring of employment practices, thus improve working conditions and employee relations. The programme redeploys resources towards improvement actions, and fosters trust and collaboration between supply chain partners.

The SLCP is not a code of conduct or compliance programme. Its Converged Assessment Framework provides a data set with no value judgement or scoring. It is however compatible with existing audit systems and codes of conduct. This means that the same data set can be used by a wide range of stakeholders and interpreted according to their interests and criteria. This eliminates the need for repetitive audits to be carried out on the same facility.

After three years of development, including three prototypes, two pilots, a public consultation and a successful “Light Operation” in 2018; the SLCP’s Converged Assessment Framework is now ready for use. Findings from research conducted by SLCP in 2018 show that adoption of SLCP could unlock resources worth over $1.5 million spent on duplicative audits in 2019 alone, rising to $200 million by 2023, for re-deployment to improve working conditions, according to a media statement.

The 190+ SLCP signatories are now preparing for wide-scale adoption across apparel and footwear supply chains. In the first roll-out phase in late-May 2019, SLCP will launch operations in India as well as China, Sri Lanka and Taiwan. To support the India launch, SLCP will be holding a series of free one-day seminars in four cities—Bengaluru, Tiruppur, Mumbai, Delhi/Gurugram—to introduce facilities and their business partners to the SLCP process.

In addition to SLCP sharing 2019 Operations plans, manufacturers associations will talk about the benefits SLCP brings to facilities, and signatory brands and retailers will present their SLCP adoption plans. Participation is open to representatives from facilities, vendors and brands that operate in the home textile, apparel and footwear industry.

“SLCP is a consistent, collaborative and widely accepted framework for social compliance worldwide, and thus a truly transformative initiative. Shahi is proud to be a signatory to SLCP and host the India launch,” said Srinivasa Rao Venkatesh, chief compliance officer, Shahi Exports. (RKS)

Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India