Homeworkers require visibility supply chain brands

Ahmedabad: More than 3.5 lakh domestic workers through the cities and villages of the Indians, sewing clothes or shoes or traditional crafts to local suppliers for global retailers such as GAP, monsoon and Walmart to make, is not meet to obtain a subsistence level in accordance with the Code practice, the work of the ILO recognized.

"The number of employees, which makes India one of the largest workers' central address is invisible," said Renana Jhabvala, President of HomeNet South Asia (HNSA), which 6 lakh domestic workers in eight countries Region.

HomeNet plans include brands and global and national retailers to optimize their supply chain and secure chain pig care workers' wages records take origin and to ensure that their compensation is not in accordance with the Ethical Trading Initiative of the International Labour Organisation.

HomeNet is organizing an international conference on the theme "Celebrate homeworkers: Twenty years and the time" on Sunday, the 20th anniversary of the Convention 177 of the ILO to act on the task in Ahmedabad.

The Convention should also call for a national policy to task the aspects of remuneration, social security and the development of workforce skills, Jhabvala said.

worldwide 100 million domestic workers, with about half of them live in South Asia an estimated.

In addition to factories clothing, shoes, crafts, sporting goods, electronics assembly, pharmaceutical packaging or packaged foods for consumers worldwide waving, Rs 3.8 million workers, mostly women, are hired by entrepreneurs from the same supply chain in India. But remain invisible in the global supply chain.

While brands recognize their presence, they are distributed far less than the space for the employees in the factories subject to wages.

In the production was, for example, while a worker could work in a factory about 300 rupees per day, its counterpart in the garment seam of the same brand they get only half or even less replaced, he said Jhabvala.

A percentage of what is charged for these brands homeworkers from intermediaries and in the absence of controls and lack of recognition in the supply chain have no one taken to ask questions.

Attempts by the Board of Export Promotion Clothing, British multinational retailer has in this decade Next began brochures issuing the order of work and wages to mention her homework to optimize their supply chain and to control, and there bring other brands under the dash ,