Independent monitoring
H&M participates in the Fair Labor Association
Since 2005 H&M has been a participating company in the Fair Labor Association (FLA). The FLA is a 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 makes unannounced independent external monitoring visits to some of H&M’s suppliers’ factories in China. The independent monitoring conducted by FLA is not a substitute for our own audit programme, however; it supplements it. The FLA publishes the results of the independent audits in a yearly report that is available on the FLA website.
Our participation in the FLA is a way of demonstrating to our stakeholders how well our follow-up work in the factories is working. It will enable us to cooperate with other brands and FLA partner organisations to improve labour standards in our supply chain. We also use the results from the FLA’s audits as a benchmark in order to ensure the quality of our internal monitoring programme.