Amazon takes an imperious stance on its commitment to social responsibility in general. The company is committed to conducting business in completely lawful and ethical ways. This includes how they engage with suppliers. Amazon only works with suppliers that:
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Are respectful of human rights
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Provide workplaces that are safe and inclusive for all employees
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Promote a future that is sustainable
What Are Amazon’s Key Commitments?
Amazon continually evaluates its supply chain so that it can assess different industries, different countries, and varying issues where there’s a potential for addressing risks and having a positive effect on workers.
If issues in the supply chain are found, Amazon prioritizes solutions for the workers.
Amazon works with its partners in industry to avert systemic issues. Amazon implements programs that are supportive of continual improvement for its suppliers and workers.
Amazon’s Fair Wages Policies
Amazon is committed to working with its suppliers, with its business partners, and with multi-stakeholder associations as a way of successfully monitoring and promoting continual improvements with respect to working conditions. This also relates to fair wages that are paid in a timely manner.
Amazon has implemented teams around the world to work directly with its suppliers. This way Amazon is able to accurately track the performance of its fair wage policy standards.
All of Amazon’s suppliers must provide appropriate compensation to their workers. This includes benefits as well as compensation for overtime. Amazon also encourages its suppliers to frequently evaluate their workers to ensure they are earning enough to meet basic needs as well as the needs of their families.
All of Amazon’s eligible suppliers must enroll in what is referred to as the Better Work program. The Better Work program, which brings together every level of the garment industry as a way of improving working conditions and ensuring respect for labor, helps workers to improve their wages given time.
How Does Amazon Empower Women?
Amazon actively works to empower female workers in terms of health, career development, and finances. To achieve this, Amazon collaborates with programs like Better Work. They have also set up a program together with Business and Social Responsibility’s (BSR) HERproject™. As of 2020, more than 8,000 women that work in Amazon’s supply chain participate in HERproject™.
How Does Amazon Help to Protect the Environment?
The key aim of Amazon is the ensure that their products cause no unnecessary harm to the environment. Rather, their products should have a positive impact on people as well as communities.
Amazon maintains a membership with Sustainable Apparel Coalition which is a group of leaders in various industries and also includes academic experts and government as well as non-governmental organizations. The goal of Sustainable Apparel Coalition is to reduce the social and environmental impacts of products on a worldwide scale.
Amazon encourages its private brand suppliers to monitor and constantly evaluate their practices through the use of the Sustainable Apparel Coalition’s Higg Index. The Higg Index helps Amazon’s suppliers to better understand the impact they are having on the environment.
What is Amazon’s Employee Training Initiative?
Amazon very much opposes human trafficking (‘modern slavery’) and fights to actively combat it across their operations and throughout their supply chain. Their commitment to the opposition to human trafficking is made clear in Amazon’s:
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Modern Day Slavery Statement (annual statement)
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Key commitments to supply chain due diligence
Amazon does not tolerate in any form the use of forced labor, child labor, or human trafficking. That includes prison and slave labor, bonded labor, and indentured servitude within their value chain or in their operations.
What are Amazon’s Supply Chain Standards?
Amazon are strongly committed to guaranteeing that the products and the services they provide are produced and delivered in such a way that human rights, as well as the environment, are respected and the basic dignity of its (Amazon’s) workers is protected.
Amazon only works with suppliers that commit to these exact same principles. Amazon sets stringent standards that all suppliers of goods and services to Amazon and to its subsidiaries must meet.
These standards are taken from the United Nations Guiding Principles, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, among others.
In order to interpret these policies, Amazon follows the guidance materials and definitions of the International Labour Organization (ILO).
