Working Conditions
Grievance Mechanisms
Early identification of employee-related issues is crucial to ensuring not only basic Code of Conduct compliance but also to creating an engaging workplace, by supporting effective and genuinely open lines of communication between managers and workers. At Gildan, both at our administrative offices and our manufacturing facilities, we accomplish this through formal grievance mechanisms featuring:
- Open Door Policy to encourage any employee to contact management on any matter and receive immediate feedback
- Employee management roundtables with clear deliverables and follow-up:
- Roundtables are organized by the management team and employees in order to identify best practices, discuss grievances, and to collectively develop an action plan for remediation
- Provide immediate feedback to the employee
- The frequency of the roundtables varies according to the region: monthly, bi-monthly, or quarterly basis
- Worker-management committees
- Several worker-management committees have been created at our various locations in order to share opinions and help manage a variety of issues in the workplace
- In addition to the health and safety and ergonomics committees, other committees have been established and meet monthly to discuss subjects including transportation, cafeteria and environmental initiatives, or to address specific issues in a particular facility or office
- The following are examples of committees that were created, and of some of the excellent initiatives that have been developed as a result.
- In Honduras, an environmental committee has been created to oversee all environmental activities at our textile complex, such as recycling, reforestation, and circulation of educational bulletins
- In the Dominican Republic, various committees were formed for employees from various shifts to work on opinion survey results and establish an action plan to work on identified areas of improvement
- In Barbados, a staff committee is responsible for planning staff activities. It also acts as an information conduit for employees
- Suggestion boxes
- Suggestion boxes located on the production floor and in cafeterias at every manufacturing facility in Central America and the Caribbean Basin are one of the grievance mechanisms used by the employees to report their concerns
- In 2011, in order to ensure transparency in the process, our facilities in Honduras implemented a new procedure to review and follow up on the concerns raised by the workers:
- Written messages from the boxes are collected every other week by a regional employee who is independent from the facility management
- In 2012, this new process will be implemented in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic
Over the years, many successful programs have been initiated based on employee suggestions originating from these suggestion boxes, such as the implementation of the Credit Union program in Rio Nance 4 in Honduras, the construction of a covered parking area for motorcycles at San Miguel, and the establishment of the Green Committee in Barbados.
- Toll-free Integrity and Social Responsibility Hotline and website link
- A toll-free Integrity and Social Responsibility Hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, enabling Gildan employees to anonymously and/or confidentially report concerns in English, French, Spanish, and Creole -– and soon in Bengali to include our recently acquired facility in Bangladesh
- This hotline is part of our whistle blowing policy launched in 2004 and is used as a tool for reporting alleged violations of the Gildan Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics
- The hotline is tested annually by the Company’s internal audit department
Each one of the reported complaints is investigated and followed up by management teams or, if submitted through the Hotline, by the Employee Concerns and Questionable Acts Committee. If senior management is involved in the complaint, the Board of Directors is consulted.
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Using creativity to promote grievance mechanisms
At Gildan, we proactively promote available grievance mechanisms and we provide specific training on these mechanisms as part of the induction training for new employees. Colourful posters promoting the grievance mechanisms and the Integrity and Social Responsibility Hotline are also displayed in the common areas of our facilities and offices.
Creative communication means have been developed to continually remind employees of the existence of these mechanisms and to encourage them to use them. For example, in 2010, employees in Honduras participated as actors and cinematographers in the production of a training video on grievance mechanisms.
Throughout 2011, this video aired on Gildan TV at each of our facilities in Honduras. After this popular video was shown on cafeteria television screens, awareness and understanding of the mechanisms improved significantly in Honduras. In order to build on this great success, a similar video was produced in Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.
