SLCP, Improving Social and Labor Conditions in Global Supply Chains

Traditionally, the clothing and footwear industry requires expensive, time-consuming, and repetitive social audits to meet different regulations and standards. SLCP allows responsible suppliers, manufacturers, brand representatives, and other industrystakeholders to reallocate time and resources used for repeated social assessments to improve workplace conditions and ensure fair, safe, and paid employment.

What is SLCP?

The Social & Labor Convergence Program (SLCP) is a non-profit program aimed at reducing the number of social audits in factories and providingreliable social and labor data. SLCP eliminates audit fatigue, enables data comparison, and frees up resources for improvement plans. The ultimate goal is to improve social andlabor conditions in the global supply chain.

What is the role of SLCP?

SLCP brings together different stakeholders to create and implement a common tool to reduce the time and money spent on social auditing. The goal of SLCP is to use the savings from auditing to improve working conditions.

The Integration Assessment Framework (CAF) of SLCP will release resources currently used for auditing and promote cooperation, thereby effectively and sustainably improvingworking conditions and workers' lives.

To read the differences between SLCP and Higg FSLM, please refer to our previous article:

What is the difference between SLCP and Higg FSLM?

What are the benefits of SLCP?

The main benefit of SLCP is that validated factories do not require multiple evaluations by different institutions.

1. The validated evaluation can be shared with multiple clothing and footwear customers using the SLCP framework. The purpose is to eliminate audit fatigue by replacing current proprietary evaluation tools - eliminating duplication and reducing the number of social and labor audits.

2. The purpose of customer (buyer) validation evaluation is to help the factory improve its on-site working conditions and grasp the results, becoming a responsible enterprise. It alsopromotes cooperation and helps develop plans for sustained improvement.

9 audit contents for SLCP verification

Recruitment and employment, working hours, wages and benefits, employee treatment,employee participation, health and safety, employment relationships, management systems, and exceeding compliance.

Process involved in SLCP validation

In short, there are three stages, namely data collection, data validation, and data sharing.

Phase 1- Data Collection

Data collection is handled by the factory. During the data collection phase, the factory must fill out the requested data in Excel format or online tools. It should be noted that even if completed using Excel, the file will still be uploaded to the platform for processing.

Phase 2- Data Validation

Validation occurs when the factory selects ASCP Services to validate the data when it is ready. Then, ASCP Services will dispatch validators to conduct on-site verification of the data. After the on-site verification is completed, the verification report will be submitted to the platform, and the factory will have 14 natural days to accept the verification report or raise disputes over the verification report. If the report is accepted, it will naturally proceed to the next step, but if there is any dispute, it will be decided by the validation supervision organization of SLCP.

Phase 3- Data Sharing

After the validation report is completed, data sharing will take place. The data is stored within the platform, but the ownership of the data belongs to the factory. Sharing data with other parties (whether existing or new business partners) is entirely up to the factory's decision.