Levi Strauss & Co; Child Labor Challenges in Bangladesh

Levi Strauss & Co; Child Labor Challenges in Bangladesh

Introduction

Levi Strauss & Co (LS & Co) is one of the largest garment factories in the world which has portfolio in 110 countries. To meet such a huge demand, company has 600 suppliers from 50 countries. As a responsible multinational company, LS & Co. is working under the defined guidelines e.g. “Country Assessment Guidelines” and Business Partner Terms of Engagement” (TOE). By following these guidelines, LS & Co. had set the standard working culture for the multinational companies (MNCs). In this regard, company had appointed special assessors to make ensure about the working environment of factories which were supplying materials to the LS & Co. Matt Wilson, operations manager in Bangladesh, found an unfortunate situation while annual assessment of ten factories. There were two factories which had employed under 15-years age children as labor; it saves the production cost (Herath & Sharma, 2012). According to the Terms of Engagement, LS & Co will not take raw material from the company which is employing child labor. In this grim scenario, LS & Co did not want to lose the supplier as well as violation of TOE as a corporate citizen, but it wants a workable solution to address the challenge.

Workable Solution

When Matt found the poor working conditions in two factories, the whole management sat with united minds to find out the solution. They also take the help from consultants and other related stakeholders. The company simply did not want to break the working relations with the two factories because of two reasons.

These companies had best quality material, new buildings, safe mechanic tools, healthy working environment and all other factors were in satisfactory position.

Informally, poor economic conditions in Bangladesh had made child labor ...