Ethical trade

Ethical trade is the assumption of responsibility of retailers, brands, and suppliers to improve the working conditions of the disadvantaged people in its supply chains. As of 2013, there are an estimated 29.8 million people in slavery worldwide, with 10.5 million child labourers forced into domestic work. The ethical trade activities of organisations such as Ethical Trading Initiative endeavor to combat these prominent issues by forming alliances between corporate, trade union, and voluntary sector members to implement ethical trade in business practices.

The term "ethical trade" first gained currency in the mid-1990s, where it was used as a term for socially responsible sourcing. Ethical trade addresses the ethical aspects of organisations including worker welfare, agricultural practice, natural resource conservation, and sustainability of the environment. Since then, numerous multinational organisations have adopted ethical trade policies by outsourcing to auditing companies to monitor the conditions of workers in their supply chains. The leading alliance of these companies, trade unions, and non-governmental organisations is the Ethical Trading Initiative. to support business

Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI) is a UK-based organisation that reaches out to 9.8 million workers per year. Since their inception in 1998, they have supported ethical trade in global supply chains by introducing legal protection for 600,000 migrant workers in the UK, aided movements for the increase of real wages in parts of Bangladesh, and contributed to more than 133,000 improvements to the welfare of workers worldwide. ETI are committed to implementing ethical trade by enforcing corporates to implement the ETI base code in their supply chains. The ETI base code reflects the commitment to ethical trade by stipulating the need for freely chosen employment, freedom of association, safe working conditions, and reasonable working hours.

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