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Social Compliance

Findings

GRI Index

HR4 HR5 HR6 HR7 AF9 AF10 AF11 AF12 SO8 AF13 AF14 AF15

Classification of social Non-Compliance

  • Fully Compliant: In full compliance with the Gildan Code of Conduct provisions and the other Codes it adheres to, as well as legal requirements.
  • Minor: Low risk issue. Improvement towards best practices. Remediation time frame: six months.
  • Moderate: Negative impact on workers' rights and safety (non-critical). Remediation time frame: up to two months, depending on type of violation.
  • Major: Serious violation of the Gildan Code of Conduct and the other Codes it adheres to and/or the law, resulting in a severe impact on individual rights and/or physical safety. Remediation time frame: immediate.

  • 2011 Internal Social Compliance Audit Findings - Gildan-Owned Facilities

    A total of 150 labor-related non-conformities were found in Gildan-owned facilities (10 facilities) during 2011: one major, 82 moderate and 67 minor. As new facilities were in the process of being ramped up in 2011, the number of non-conformities slightly increased.

    Most of the 2011 findings (approximately 80%) related to environmental health and safety issues. As this is a highly regulated area, it is the section of our assessment questionnaire that contains the most questions.

    The only major finding at a Gildan-owned facility in 2011 was related to delays caused by the local government for the approval of a business license at a new facility which was ramping-up its construction and began production during the year.

    The findings at Gildan-owned facilities involved:

    • Record keeping, such as incomplete employee contracts.
      • Human Resources employees training has been supplemented to ensure that employees are knowledgeable regarding all requirements of employee contracts.
    • Hours of work, such as overtime in excess of the prescribed 60 hours per week.
      • For more details on this temporary issue and its remediation, please refer to the case study presented in the Remediation section.
    • Fire safety, such as blocked emergency exits, blocked electrical panel and other minor electrical deficiencies.
      • We have found that non-conformities in this area are often linked to employee negligence. Raising our employees' awareness, through the use of bulletin boards and refresher training courses, and reiterating rules and procedures during health and safety committee meetings, are various ways in which Gildan works toward improving compliance in this area.
    • General cleanliness and sanitary conditions, such as cafeteria hygiene and overall upkeep and sanitation in facilities and bathrooms.
      • A sanitation procedure was developed for proper food handling and storage in cafeterias.
      • Regarding overall upkeep and sanitation in our facilities, our quality team is working on developing cleaning manuals as well as a list of procedures to be posted in various areas.
    • Machine safety, such as missing needles or eye guards, safety lights on lift-trucks and other missing or deficient safety devices on machines.
      • Refresher training in these areas is important in order to increase employee awareness of the essential nature of keeping these safety devices on the machine, to ensure their own safety.
      • Informing the maintenance department when a safety device is missing on a machine is also a key safety element. Simultaneously, it is also important that the maintenance department replaces missing machine parts or safety items in a timely manner.
    • Chemical safety, such as unlabelled containers.
      • For more details on this issue and its remediation, please click here.

    In all of the above-mentioned issues, employees, supervisors and management accountability and discipline is very important in order to enforce rules and procedures established on that front. It is necessary to continually increase employee awareness of these rules and procedures. This is why environmental, and health and safety training are essential. At the same time, when there is an obvious case of negligence, supervisors must also apply progressive disciplinary measures consistently as a demonstration of their commitment to Gildan values and practices

    In every non-conformity case, detailed remediation plans and, where indicated, in-depth root cause analyses were implemented.

  • 2010 Internal Social Compliance Audit Findings - Gildan-Owned Facilities

    A total of 103 labor-related non-conformities were found in Gildan-owned facilities (13 facilities) during 2010. Out of these non-conformities, 58 were moderate and 45 were minor.

  • Long-term Haitian Contractor Facilities

    A total of 79 labor-related non-conformities were found at our long-term Haitian contractor facilities (four facilities) during 2010. Of these non-conformities, four were major, 36 moderate and 39 minor.

    During 2011, a total of 48 labor-related non-conformities were found in our Haitian contractor facilities (four facilities): two of them being major, 28 moderate and 18 minor.

    Out of the total of six major findings found at our long-term Haitian contractors during 2010 and 2011, four were related to delayed payments of social security benefits to employees. As soon as these non-conformities were reported, we requested immediate retroactive payments to workers, and contractor management resolved the issue. This situation has not affected health care assistance to workers. One notice of non-conformity was related to the absence of a business license, which was not available at the facility at the time of the audit. The business license was made available at the follow-up audit. Finally, during the most recent audit at one of our contractors' facility in 2011, we identified that the temperature in the workplace was too high. The contractor will remediate this issue during the December closing period in order to make the necessary constructions.

    The findings at long-term Haitian contractor facilities involve:

    • Lack of Code of Conduct awareness.
      • Gildan's corporate social responsibility coordinator in Haiti provided a Gildan Code of Conduct refresher training course to employees in 2010.
    • Record keeping, such as incomplete employee contracts.
      • Although these matters have been remediated, we will continue to work with the contractor management team to enforce best practices in this area.
    • Fire safety, related primarily to blocked emergency exits, blocked electrical panels and other minor electrical deficiencies.
      • We have found that non-conformities in this area are often linked to employee negligence. Raising employees' awareness through the use of bulletin boards, courses, and reiterating rules and procedures during health and safety committee meetings, are various ways in which Gildan works toward improving compliance in this area. We will continue to work with the contractor management team to enforce best practices in this area.
    • General cleanliness and sanitary conditions, such as workplace temperature, as mentioned above.
      • Non-conformities were also related to inadequate cafeteria and washroom facilities. While some of these non-conformities have already been fixed, we are currently working with our contractor management teams to resolve the remaining concerns in a timely manner.
    • Machine safety, such as missing needles or eye guards, safety lights on lift-trucks and other missing or deficient safety devices on machines.
      • We will work with the contractor management team to enforce best practices in this area.

  • 2010-2011 information related to GRI indicators HR5-HR6-HR7

    In its effort to ensure that no children are employed in its facilities and the facilities of its contractors, Gildan’s Code of Conduct minimum working age provision has been set to 18 years. Even though in most countries it is legal to work at age 15 or 16, many restrictions apply to young workers (ILO Minimum Age Convention, 1973). For example, young workers are not allowed to perform hazardous duties or work at night (ILO Night Work of Young Person (Industry) Convention, 1919). According to our interpretation of the ILO convention on child labor, we believe that it is appropriate to exclude young workers from our facilities and have decided to set our minimum working age at 18 years. When we acquired our facility in Bangladesh in 2010, a country identified as having significant risk for child labor incidents as it has not ratified ILO Convention 138 on child labor, we conducted a complete screening of employees to confirm that they were all above the age of 18.

    Child labor is continually monitored through audits conducted by either Gildan’s internal or third-party auditors in order to alleviate the risk of child labour incidents. In 2010 and 2011, there were no incidents related to child labour either at Gildan-owned facilities or at its contractor facilities.

    Although Gildan’s Code of Conduct prohibits the use of forced or compulsory labour, we had one finding associated with involuntary overtime at one of our facilities.

    With regards to freedom of association, we experienced two situations during the reporting period. For more details on these issues, please consult our Unions section.

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