That headline does not read right.
If you fail an audit, that’s a bad thing.
Yeah, I get what they mean but it doesn’t work as written. They mean that it is “designed to fail as a measure to protect workers“
US and UK companies with foreign operations use audits to prevent worker abuse – but auditors say the checks aren’t working
I think they mean that they fail to accomplish their goal. But you’re not wrong in that it’s poorly worded.
And how can you fail at worker abuse? it’s the easiest thing, everybody’s doing it.
And that’s because there are no consequences.
Giving jackass in finance a wink wink laden dressdown for their behavior, but then giving them a bonus every year and laughing about the whole thing during your next golf match, doesn’t change their behavior.
Throwing their ass out on the street might.
EDIT: and then there’s the issue of the bosses themselves being at fault and nothing will ever be done against them unless there are actual criminal charges upcoming, like with Ubisoft.
I’d prefer in jail for what theft and destruction quite a few have wrought on workers.
That’s because of the purpose of the audit.
The purpose of the audit isn’t to find and fix something, but to say that an audit was performed. That way, a consumer can see that an audit has been performed and feel better about buying something whether or not it is was performed correctly.
Audits only really have teeth when someone who has a vested interest in the quality of the audit participates in the audit.
The solution is obvious. Hire an auditing firm to audit the auditing firms.
Bonus points if the auditing firm, hired to audit, subcontracts the auditing to the firm they are supposed to audit.
And if they outsource the auditing to an India based auditing firm
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Ahmed scrutinized the attendance and pay records the company provided him, he found they had been falsified, in part because security footage showed the man was truly enduring a grueling schedule.
In interviews with the reporting partnership, nearly 100 workers describe an array of unfair and repressive labor practices within the Persian Gulf footprints of Amazon, McDonald’s, Chuck E Cheese and the InterContinental Hotels Group.
Dozens of firms perform hundreds of thousands of audits each year of labor, environmental and safety practices for many Fortune 500 companies and a host of smaller corporations.
“A vast majority of the social audit industry is so opaque that it doesn’t build trust with workers and their representatives and the lack of transparency is also fertile ground for the worst malpractices to thrive unchecked,” says Kashyap.
After interviewing 20 former and current auditors and dozens of industry experts, Kashyap concluded that auditing companies often don’t operate independently or transparently, acting more frequently as a way for brands to burnish their image than to keep workers safe.
“It is scandalous how much power has been afforded to multinational corporations, American brands, to dictate the terms of their own complicity because they have lawyers to say they checked all the boxes and are human trafficking compliant,” says Elena Shih, an assistant professor at Brown University and the author of Manufacturing Freedom: Sex Work, Anti-Trafficking Rehab, and the Racial Wages of Rescue.
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