

In response to immense social pressure and a potentially damaged brand, Loblaw and other retailers have promised to do
everything in their power to prevent these conditions from continuing. Scholars in corporate social responsibility have
identified four major approaches through which companies respond to social
pressures. A reactive approach is one where companies deny responsibility for
social issues by claiming that they are the responsibility of someone else,
typically government. A defensive
approach is one where the company admits responsibility but fights it, doing
the very least that seems to be required.
Their approach may be based primarily on superficial public relations
rather than positive action. An
accommodative approach is one where the company accepts responsibility and implements what is demanded of it by relevant groups.
Finally a proactive approach is one where the company goes beyond
industry norms and anticipates future expectations by doing more than what is
expected.
At first blush, it appears
that Loblaw is taking on an accommodative or even proactive strategy in light
of their recent commitments
to provide financial assistance to injured workers and families, rehabilitation
efforts for injured workers, as well as a joint program with Save the Children
Canada and Save the Children Bangladesh to “provide life skills and workplace
support for garment industry workers and their families”. The company also committed to joining other
international retailers to source garments from regularly inspected individual
factories and to make the reports public.
So far so good…impressed?
I would argue that this approach is not accommodative or
proactive but at best defensive. The response by companies like Loblaw is
meant to communicate to their consumers that they will not stand for conditions
like these in their supply chain. Yet
the mere decision, however many years ago, to source from a place like
Bangladesh is an explicit position enacted by Loblaw that it is interested and willing
to exploit a labour market that represents a huge cost saving to the company. But this cost saving is not some fluke
opportunity for an international retailer. It is instead an outcome that is completely dependent on
particular worker conditions enabled by poor regulatory and legal institutions and citizen desperation. What is more, these
sorts of conditions are not new to the textile industry. As already mentioned, these issues have been around for over 20 years with case after case of major
brand names demonstrating complicity in some unethical supplier behaviour.
So, to me, companies like Loblaw fail to demonstrate
responsibility in their decisions until they are forced to as a result of some
tragedy that could irreparably damage their image. But until that happens, we will see no valiant effort to address worker rights. What we see now in their response is merely
an attempt to distract the consumer and the broader public that they are at
best complicit as a result of their strategic decision to reduce costs by
sourcing from an exploitative supplier context and that the lessons learned by
their peers well before Joe Fresh even existed were completely ignored for the sake of shareholder wealth creation.
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