Agriculture Supply Chain Principles for Responsible Sourcing
FLA maintains a set of principles to uphold and protect workers’ rights in agricultural supply chains.
These principles are rooted in international labor standards and draw from internationally accepted guidelines for businesses. The principles provide foundational and operational guidance for companies to apply in their workplace labor standards management systems in upstream supply chains.
FLA Participating Companies with agricultural supply chains are expected to implement these principles for the commodities in scope as part of continuous improvement and to demonstrate leadership in protecting workers’ rights.
Principles of Fair Labor and Responsible Sourcing for Companies with Agricultural Supply Chains
1A. Top Management Commitment and Workplace Labor Standards: Participating Company is committed to accountability and transparency through established workplace standards.
1B. Risk Assessment and Traceability: Participating Company uses risk assessment to prioritize its workplace labor compliance program implementation and progressively increase supply chain traceability.
2. Responsible Sourcing and Procurement: Participating Company aligns its sourcing/procurement practices with a commitment to workplace labor standards.
3. Company Staff Training: Participating Company identifies and ensures that the specific personnel responsible for implementing labor standards (at head office and in the regions) are trained and are aware of the labor standards criteria.
4. Business Partner Training and Implementation: Participating Company obtains commitment, and drives business partner awareness of labor standards.
5. Monitoring: Participating Company conducts labor standards compliance monitoring at the farm level.
6. Functioning Grievance Mechanisms: Participating Company ensures workers, farmers, and their family members (where applicable) have access to functioning grievance mechanisms, which include multiple reporting channels of which at least one is confidential.
7. Collection and Management of Compliance Information: Participating Company collects, manages, and analyzes labor standards compliance information.
8. Timely and Preventative Remediation: Participating Company works with business partners to remediate in a timely and preventative manner.
9. Consultation with Civil Society: Participating Company identifies, researches and engages with relevant local and international labor non-governmental organizations, trade unions, and other civil society institutions.
10. Verification Requirements: Participating Company meets FLA verification and program requirements.