Last month our Head of Business & Strategy, Jess Mutton, completed the SA8000 Standard Introduction & Basic Auditor Training with Social Accountability International (SAI) via a 5-day online program streamed from Malaysia.
The SA8000 Standard is a world-leading social certification program, providing a framework for businesses around the fair treatment of workers. The SA8000 Standard is based on internationally recognised standards of decent work, including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Labour Organisation (ILO) conventions, and national laws.
Elements of the standard include child labour, forced or compulsory labour, health and safety, freedom of association and right to collective bargaining, discrimination, disciplinary practices, working hours, remuneration and management systems.
There are currently 4,645 facilities certified by the SA8000 Standard, which means 2.2 million workers across 59 countries and 57 industries are attending workplaces where human and labour rights have been assessed to a high standard.
The SA8000 Standard is important to GECA because we require this certification as one type of documentation to show evidence of conformance in our ecolabelling program, under our new social criteria in the human and labour rights section. We are currently in the process of adding our updated social criteria into all GECA standards.
By completing the SA8000 Introduction & Basic Auditor training, Jess brings to GECA a deeper understanding of the requirements of the SA8000 standard for our licensees. It has also enhanced our labour and human rights work, advocacy, and stakeholder support in applying an ethical management system approach in supply chains.
A big thank you to SAI from Jess and the GECA team for the opportunity to complete the training! We highly recommend the training to anyone interested in labour and human rights, and we congratulate SAI for their incredible work in this space.
