Abstract
Background, aim and scope
A characterisation model based on multi-criteria indicators has been developed for each of four impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) covering: forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining and child labour (Dreyer et al., Int J Life Cycle Assess, 2010a, in press). These impact categories are considered by the authors to be among the obligatory impact categories in a Social LCA. The characterisation models combine information about the way a company manages its behaviour towards some of its important stakeholders, its employees, with information about the geographical location and branch of industry of the company and the risk of violations of these workers' rights inherent in the setting of the company. The result is an indicator score which for each impact category represents the risk that violations occur in the company. In order to test the feasibility and relevance of the developed methodology, it is tested on real cases.
Materials and methods
The developed characterisation models are applied to six cases representing individual manufacturing companies from three different continents. Five of the case companies are manufacturing companies while the sixth is a knowledge company. The application involves scoring the management efforts of the case company in a multi-criteria scorecard and translating the scores into an aggregated performance score, which represents the effort of the management in order to prevent violations of the workers' rights to occur in the company. The company performance score is multiplied by a contextual adjustment score which reflects the risk of violations taking place in the context (in terms of geographical location or industrial branch or sector) of the company. The resulting indicator score represents the risk that violations take place of the labour right represented by the impact category.
Results
The social impact characterisation is performed for each of the six case studies using the methodology earlier developed. The procedure and outcome are documented through all the intermediary results shown for all four obligatory impact categories for each of the six case studies.
Discussion
The results are judged against the risk which was observed during visits and interviews at each of the six case companies, and their realism and relevance are discussed. They are found to be satisfactory for all four impact categories for the manufacturing companies, but there are some problems for two of the impact categories in the case company which represents knowledge work, and it is discussed how these problems may be addressed through change of the underlying scorecard or the way in which the scoring is translated into a company performance score.
Conclusions
It is concluded that it is feasible to perform a characterisation of the impacts related to the four obligatory impact categories representing the labour rights according to the conventions of the ILO covering: forced labour, discrimination, restrictions of freedom of association and collective bargaining and child labour. When compared with the observed situation in the companies, the results are also found to be relevant and realistic.
Recommendations and perspectives
The proposed characterisation method is rather time-consuming and cannot realistically be applied to all companies in the product system. It must therefore be combined with less time-requiring screening methods which can help identify the key companies in the life cycle for which a detailed analysis is required. The possibility to apply country- or industry sector-based information is discussed, and while it is found useful to identify low-risk companies and eliminate them from more detailed studies, the ability of the screening methods to discriminate between companies located in medium and high-risk contexts is questionable.
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Notes
In literature, the term freedom of association is often used as a collective term for all three elements of the ILO Conventions no.97 and no.98: freedom of association, right to organise and right to collective bargaining. For reasons of simplicity, we here chose to abbreviate, in accordance with this practice, the impact category Restrictions of freedom of association, right to organise and collective bargaining to restrictions of freedom of association and the corresponding indicator to freedom of association, even though these have a much broader scope than the abbreviated names suggest.
More elaborate presentation is available in Appendix 2 in the Electronic Supplementary Material.
In addition to these three steps, which concern the assessment of the individual companies in the product chain, there is a fourth step concerning the relation between the companies and the product and the conversion of company scores along the product chain into a social impact score for the product. This step is only relevant when a full LCA is performed and it is hence not implemented in the case studies here (see Characterisation of obligatory impacts in Dreyer et al. (2010a)).
See multi-criteria indicator model in Fig. 2 in Dreyer et al. (2010a).
Companies A–E are ISO 14001-certified and companies A, D and E are additionally OHSAS 18001-certified. This influenced the scoring in regards to non-discrimination to a small degree. For more details, refer to the more elaborate presentation of case study results in Appendix 2 in the Electronic Supplementary Material.
For exceptions to this general picture, refer to the more elaborate presentation of case study results in Appendix 2 in the Electronic Supplementary Material.
On the influence of the contextual risk assessment see reflections in contextual risk classification of labour rights violations in Dreyer et al. (2010e).
The indicator distinguishes between three types of working children: (1) children below general minimum age hired to carry out light work (2) children hired as apprentices, and (3) children between general minimum age and 18 years of age (young workers) hired to carry out non-hazardous work.
Abbreviations
- CRF:
-
Company free rein
- CRC:
-
Contextual risk class
- CAF:
-
Contextual adjustment factor
- CR:
-
Company risk
- CP:
-
Company performance
- CP max :
-
Maximum company performance
- PRS:
-
Product risk score
- ISO:
-
International Organization for Standardization
- ILO:
-
International Labour Organisation
- NGO:
-
Non-governmental organisation
References
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Dreyer LC, Hauschild MZ, Schierbeck J (2010e) Development of contextual risk classification for labour rights violations. Supporting information 4 to ‘Characterisation of social impacts in LCA—development of indicators for labour rights’. Int J Life Cycle Assess, doi:10.1007/s11367-009-0148-7
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Acknowledgements
The work has been performed as part of the Industrial Ph.D. “Inclusion of Social Aspects in LCA” carried out at Brødrene Hartmann A/S, Denmark, and Department of Management Engineering, Section for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, at the Technical University of Denmark. Financial support for the study from Brødrene Hartmann A/S and the Danish Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank the case study companies for their participation.
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Preamble
The present paper is the second in a series of two. The characterisation model based on multi-criteria indicators representing fundamental labour rights presented in the first paper is implemented in six company case studies and evaluated on this basis in the present paper. (Part 1: development of indicators for labour rights).
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Dreyer, L.C., Hauschild, M.Z. & Schierbeck, J. Characterisation of social impacts in LCA. Part 2: implementation in six company case studies. Int J Life Cycle Assess 15, 385–402 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0159-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0159-4