Sales of fairly traded products have bucked the trend of decline in the UK retail market to grow by 12% in the last year. The value of Fairtrade products sold through shops reached £1.32bn in 2011, compared to £1.17bn in 2010, according to figures from the Fairtrade Foundation, as it launches its annual marketing fortnight [...]

Tesco, BT and Unilever are among the first companies to sign up to use the ‘Think, Act, Report’ framework (11-page, 166KB PDF), which aims to “improve transparency” on equality issues in the private and voluntary sectors. The framework was developed by the Government Equalities Office and conciliation service Acas. It is designed to help employers [...]

Bangladesh will almost double the minimum wage for its garment workers, a wage board official says, following months of violent protests over pay. It will rise from 1,662 taka ($25; £16) per month to 3,000 taka. The labour ministry is to formally announce the deal on Thursday. Workers wanted the rate, last raised in 2006, [...]

Giant global discount retailers like Aldi, Lidl, Tesco, Carrefour, and Walmart try to lure consumers into their shops with low, low prices. A man’s suit for £25 at Tesco, a woman’s dress for $9 at Walmart, or jeans for €8 at Carrefour. How do they do it? … … If you’re a worker in the [...]

Laggards of the past often turn into leaders of the present. The case of Wal-Mart perfectly illustrates this paradoxical tendency, states a report published today by Geneva-based ethical reputation research firm Covalence – Covalence Retail Industry Report 2008. A year ago Wal-Mart was still last in Covalence EthicalQuote ranking calculated for 27 companies in the [...]

The issue of child labor strikes an emotional chord with a vast majority of consumers. When the BBC released a segment detailing the ongoing horrors of child labor in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry in October 2007, massive public attention was drawn to the world’s third largest exporter of cotton and its unsettling child rights abuses. The [...]

Following Tesco’s recent legal wrangle with the Guardian over allegations of corporation tax avoidance, the retailer’s tax affairs have one again hit the headlines. It turns out that the retailer is engaging in corporation tax avoidance schemes, after all. Private Eye has uncovered what it terms as “another complex web of offshore operations” which features [...]

Reporting leaders, including Tesco, Dell and Nestle, are being urged to find out what their suppliers’ carbon footprints are. The move is getting a mixed response. It is five years since the global climate change initiative, the Carbon Disclosure Project, first received backing from investors to ask the world’s largest companies to report annually on [...]

Marks & Spencer and Wal-Mart are driving the ethical agenda for the retail sector, according to a report published by Covalence, a Switzerland-based company operating an ethical quotation system. The Covalence Retail Industry Report 2007 refers to Marks & Spencer as a “proactive leader, appearing in many positive news items.” Wal-Mart is said to be [...]

Marks & Spencer and Wal-Mart drive the ethical agenda of Retailers, which has been dominated by environmental issues in 2006-2007, states a report released by Geneva-based ethical reputation research firm Covalence, Covalence Retail Industry Report 2007. Marks & Spencer is a proactive leader: it appears in many positive news items and maintains a remarkably low [...]