At the International Meeting held in Granada, the Ethical Trade Forums took the first steps to create a new Working Group, aimed at addressing the issue of ethical trade management and the involvement of labor agencies and consultants in these processes.
We intend to work on training strategies so that agencies understand and assimilate customer requirements, in addition to the latest legislative changes, including labor reform and renewals of collective agreements. We want to emphasize the need to raise the standards of its services to avoid misinterpretations and incorrect applications. It is about the harmonization of practices and the support to this group of professionals in the sector who, sometimes, do not have direct access to know the requirements of the final clients.
Thanks to the large participation, 88 of the professionals attending the International Meeting gave their point of view on what factors should be taken into account to achieve a positive impact. The contribution of ideas has led us to propose the new group based on the involvement of new actors, including auditors, consultants, labor inspectors, representatives of company committees and unions, labor lawyers, certification entities, among others. , in addition to producers, supermarkets or members of cooperatives.
Among the proposed actions, the idea of developing training initiatives aimed at deepening the ethical-social standards for small businesses, social protocols and raising awareness of the problem of forced labor stands out, in order to keep knowledge about the legal frameworks of forced labor up-to-date. application and increase the awareness of farmers and their involvement in the management of human resources and the rights of workers in the sector.
In addition, we also want to develop new guides and useful instruments that help in the identification of the specific needs of each company and in the selection of the consultancies and agencies that may be most convenient for each case.
Since more than half of those attending the Meeting considered that the creation of the new Working Group would be a good idea, we invite you to be part of it, reminding you that the Ethical Trade Forums are a collaborative work project that we are all protagonists and main actors.
If you are interested in the topic and want to participate, contact us to form the initial group.