New Terms of Engagement
A look back — and ahead — at the Levi Strauss & Co.’s Terms of Engagement with its suppliers around the world.
Transcript
if products were being manufactured in
contractor facilities we were
responsible for the way in which they
were being manufactured the terms of
engagement that Levi’s produced in 1991
was the code that launched a thousand
codes and remade the way the apparel
industry is run our biggest fear once we
implemented our terms of engagement was
that no one else would follow our lead
this was going to cost us anywhere
between 50 cents and 75 cents a garment
but when you believe in the basic
philosophy of doing the right thing when
you believe that workers do have this
the same set of rights that the rest of
us do have and the power of the brand I
think we believed that would far
outweigh any of the negatives I think it
was really critical for Levi’s to take
this step as a major u.s. brand and to
say to the rest of the world we have a
relationship with these factories that
extends beyond price and quality and
performance to also treatment of workers
environmental attributes it’s important
to me to make sure that anyone I’m
asking to work on on the same product
that I’m working on is enjoying to some
degree the same same sense of fairness
and safety that I enjoy here as a
merchant so we’re hands on in the
product every day and we have amazing
opportunities to work on-site with our
contractors and to travel to you know
developing countries across the world at
the end of the day I want to feel you
know good about my contribution to the
world I think now’s the time to really
take it to another level and I think
this is the role that that company is
going to take what comes next I think is
a movement from looking talk to
compliance complying with basic
principles to creation and innovation
and finding new ways for workers to be
involved in protecting their own rights
for workers to find good livelihoods and
not just basic legal compliance over the
next nine to 12 months we got to work
with some NGOs to redefine what is the
next of
lucien of our sourcing guidelines how do
we once again take the leadership role
and elevate the total industry to what
is next now is the time to start doing
that work now what we will see is how we
can impact workers life and goes beyond
the factory walls meaning how we can
impact their communities how those
communities will be healthier I see an
even bigger opportunity in the next 20
years a wordless can go it’s about going
out and using the economic cloud of this
company to improve the lives of the
workers not just not just be satisfied
with being fair
but being better anything good this will
create better companies this will create
a better world
