Independent monitoring
H&M participates in the Fair Labor Association
In 2005, H&M was accepted as a participating company in the Fair Labor Association (FLA), effective 1 January 2006. The FLA is a multi-stakeholder coalition of companies, universities and NGOs dedicated to protecting workers’ rights and improving working conditions.
Being a participating company of the FLA involves committing to a rigorous programme of implementing FLA’s Workplace Code of Conduct, monitoring and remediation. More precisely, it means that the FLA will conduct unannounced independent external monitoring visits at some of H&M’s suppliers’ factories in China. The independent monitoring conducted by FLA will however not substitute our own audit programme - it will supplement it. At the end of 2006, FLA will publicly report the results of the independent audits it has performed. The report will be available on FLA’s website.
Our participation in the FLA is a way of demonstrating to our stakeholders how we strive towards full compliance with our Code of Conduct. It will enable us to cooperate with other brands and FLA partner organisations to improve labour standards in our supply chain. We will also use the results from FLA’s audits as a benchmark in order to ensure the quality of our internal monitoring programme.