More than 20 years of global corporate social responsibility (CSR) monitoring — “social audits” by “independent, third party monitors” of corporate codes of conduct — have failed to detect unsafe and illegal conditions, failed to correct unsafe conditions that have been observed, failed to engender any long-term changes in factory conditions, and failed to even identify where and by whom the brands’ consumer products are being made.
CSR monitoring has been a spectacular failure at improving working conditions. But it allows brands to claim a “good faith effort” to improve working conditions in their supply chains, and that “everything is getting better.”