Out of 25 high street clothing brands that were ranked in Ethical consumer’ s latest product guide to clothing M & S came top of the table, followed by Zara and H & M. Asda came bottom with a score of 0.5. The Ethical consumer’ s product guide ranks companies using data. The ratings cover on estimate of 300 topics in 19 areas in 5 main categories; product sustainability, environment, animals, politics and people( Moore, 2014).
In April 2011, Asda announced that they were launching a pilot project to their factories in the Asian supply chain. This was due to Asda coming under much scrutiny in the previous five years over the treatment of their workers. The plan was to ensure workers’ rights in its garment supply chain. However Actionaid( 2011) investigated into these factories and revealed the conditions for the workers has still remained unacceptable( ActionAid UK, 2011).
Asda claimed that their pilot project was a success due to a 14 % increase in workers’ wages across their four factories in Bangladesh, Asda plans to enlarge the project to 17 other factories in Bangladesh and then over to India and China. Asda’ s 14 % improvement in wages isn’ t enough due to wages being historically low in Bangladesh, the wages still fall short of the living wage( ActionAid UK, 2011).
In the present day according to George’ s( Asda’ s clothing line) website they have invested in ensuring their factories do not waste cost, therefore protecting the worker’ s salary. This is due to following a listening group with Actionaid( George, n. d). How much of this is just really good marketing? What are the covered costs? According to Actionaid( 2011) the cost of labour in one retail garment can be as little as 1 %. In one of Asda’ s pilot factories just paying 7.5 pence more to the supplier per garment could pay a living wage to a worker( ActionAid Uk, 2011). In 2015 Asda’ s profit was £ 1.013 billion would it really hurt them to give up 7.5 pence( Davey and Pitchford, 2015)?
Figure 16
18