Ethical & Fair Trading
The global apparel industry is a very sophisticated and yet a very highly labour-dependent industry. Therefore, the foremost work ethic in our business is that everyone has the right to be treated properly and fairly as human beings. Our customers, consumers and all of us at David Luke have an impact on thousands of people around the world and we need to make every effort to ensure this impact is positive.
We have a responsibility to ensure that every DL garment is produced in an environment where everyone benefits and progresses, not just one party. We have had our 'Responsible Code of Practice' in place with our suppliers for a number of years now and it works very well.
Before the code of practice we had the same general principles of sourcing set out by our founders David Burgess and Adrian Luke, so you could say that this has been in place since day one.
David Burgess, Managing Director comments:
"Instead of scouring the Earth to get the next cheapest price, we work closely with our factories to achieve a level of trust, which results in practical savings and has seen some wonderful technical developments which benefit everyone."
This Code continually monitors every supplier to ensure that not only are the standards being met but that improvements are being made all the time. It is very important that these standards do not drop, as we have a social responsibility to everyone who is involved in the process that they benefit.
A brief summary is below of our 'Responsible Code of Practice':
We ensure that all local, national and international laws are met with regard to workers rights, employment law, workers conditions, environmental issues which impact everyone involved. The document is split into the below 10 points.
- General Principles
- Environment
- Discrimination
- Forced Labour
- Child Labour
- Wages & Benefits
- Working Hours
- Working Conditions
- Freedom of Association
- Monitoring & Enforcement
If we feel that any of these local, national, or international laws are not stringent enough to meet our principles then we give the factories guidelines of what we expect.
We believe the above principles allow us to create 'long term' business relationships with our factories. This is can be a huge benefit to all concerned as they can confidently develop their lives and communities based on repeated, long term, reliable business and this is what we believe is the key to fair and positive trade.
