How Do Garment Enterprises Face Social Responsibility In The Downturn Of The Industry?

It has been more than 2 months since the 5. 12 earthquake in Wenchuan. The textile and garment industry has not forgotten the disaster. The report on this topic can be seen in the prominent position of many industry websites. The silence for the victims of Wenchuan earthquake has become the preface of many industry forums and conferences.

In the difficult period of profit margins, the textile and garment industry has made remarkable contributions to nearly 1 billion yuan.

A month after the Wenchuan earthquake, the China Textile Industry Association launched the outline of the report on social responsibility of China's textile and garment enterprises, and issued the "2007 annual report on China's textile and garment industry social responsibility".

Against this background, the clothing times combines China Textile Economic information network, first textile net, China apparel net and Huicong net textile channel, Huicong net clothing channel, launches a joint online survey: "after 5 / 12, how does the textile and garment industry see social responsibility?"

The survey results showed that - law-abiding taxes, environmental protection ranked first.

In "what do you think corporate social responsibility is mainly about?"

In this question, there are two options for getting the most votes: "obeying the law, paying taxes, obeying business ethics" and "protecting the environment and saving resources".

The former has the largest number of votes in the first textile network and Huicong net; the latter gets the first place in the textile economic information network and the China apparel network, with the textile economic information network reaching 63.64%.

It is worth noting that the "protection of the legitimate rights and interests of employees" option in four websites, the votes were second.

From the identity of the participants, the management and workers of textile and garment enterprises were involved. In the first textile network, the proportion of workers reached 48.08%.

Although there are no workers in China's clothing network, the number of votes for protecting the legitimate rights and interests of employees is still second.

This also shows from the side that protecting the legitimate rights and interests of employees is not only the wishes of workers, but also the importance of managers.

Profit and responsibility

Most of the respondents believe that social responsibility is "something that must be done". Others believe that the level of corporate profitability determines whether or not an enterprise needs to fulfill its social responsibilities.

According to the findings of the four websites, the overall social responsibility level of the textile and garment industry is not very high, and two websites are considered "poor" by the respondents, while the other two voted the "big business better and the small and medium enterprises" worse.

As for the relationship between corporate profit and social responsibility, everyone agrees that "both will promote each other", and most people do not accept the view that "low profit level can not fulfill social responsibility".

Four major problems

What are the social responsibilities of textile and garment enterprises?

The survey shows that there are four main aspects: overtime work, unreasonable salary and welfare, imperfect management system and irregular labor contract.

Among them, the most concern is "overtime work" and "unreasonable remuneration and benefits".

These two points are also a difficult problem for many years in the industry.

According to the results of the reappraisal of the first batch of 9 pilot enterprises released by the annual report on the social responsibility of China's textile and garment industry (CSC9000T), the higher proportion of the "CSC9000T" and "no improvement" problems in the ten elements of the CSC9000T include working hours (60.87%), salaries and benefits (57.89%), management system (50%), occupational health and safety (52.08%).

The improvement rate of labor contract law is very high (81.82%), which is obviously directly related to the implementation of the labor contract law.

This is also reflected in this survey, and the role of the labor contract law has been recognized by the respondents.

Can CSC9000T solve the problem of working hours?

The working hours of textile and garment enterprises often exceed the standard of working hours stipulated by the state law. For this problem, the respondents' opinions are mainly divided into two groups: one group thinks that the industry has particularity, and there is no way to solve the problem.

If this problem is thrown to Yang Xun, JEANSWEST's boss of CSC9000T pilot enterprise, he will put forward his own practical solutions: updating equipment, adjusting the assembly line, working process and system, as a result, efficiency is improved, labor time is reduced, management and site costs are reduced, and workers' income and output increase.

In fact, the labor productivity of China's manufacturing industry is much lower than that of the developed countries, and there is still much room for improvement.

Since the implementation of CSC9000T by the China Textile Industry Association in 2005, the management system has penetrated into various industrial clusters. According to this survey, many respondents have a certain understanding of CSC9000T, but many respondents believe that the system is difficult to carry out in the whole industry.