What is the CSR?

The corporate social responsibility (CSR) is a concept in which corporate take social, environmental and economic concern into account in all their activities and their interactions with stakeholders (shareholders, employee, suppliers, customers, community…)
The CSR is the corporate way of sustainable development concepts. There is 3 major topics: Environmental, social, economic. The CSR aim to defined the companies’ responsibility towards the stakeholders according to the philosophy “act local, think global” (René Dubos). Thus it needs to take both global and local context into account to define the strategy.

What does the “social” in CSR stand for?

The “social” in CSR refers to the impact on workers, and the community on a socio-economic level. A good example is how buying practices focused on lowest cost and highest speed of a company is closely tied to a factory worker’s wage working for one of their suppliers. That wage then impacts the local community the worker lives and spends his/her salary.

To get an accurate picture of the holistic impact, it is necessary to take every interaction between an employee and their local community into account. Let’s use wages again to illustrate this picture.

If an employee is required to work over 12 hours daily without earning the bare minimum to cover the living expenses of his or her family, other family members including children under the age of 16 are forced to work too. Creating a vicious cycle, children of these families are left with no choice but to choose work over school, losing all opportunity to raise their own socio-economic status above poverty. Unfortunately, many do not realize how wages have a direct impact on not just the employee, but also his/her family’s future and the local community.

In response to this issue, WethicA strongly believes organizations should require discretionary wages based on the local living standards rather than forcing factories to try to adhere to legal minimum wages. In some countries, the minimum wages of two working parents combined is not enough for a family to subsist on.

Working on the labor part of the CSR is useful.

This is an important approach for companies for several aspects:

• First about the image risk. A communication campaign denouncing working conditions in factories can be devastating for a brand. Its effects are as well on short term with a boycott risk as on long term on the value linked to the brand.
• It’s important too according to the company’s community. Giving back to the community is an important value which is also especially important for the company staff that can identify with it.
• Finally in term of suppliers management. The permanence of the quality and productivity delivered by a supplier seems difficult to grant if an important part of its staff change each season.

Main topics of the labor part of CSR:

• Human rights.
• Labor rights
• Child labor.
• Forced labor.
• Working time.
• Wages and compensation.
• Working condition (including health and safety).

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