Myer is determined to lower our energy usage, and reduce associated greenhouse gas emissions resulting from our business operations.

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Myer’s priority is to explore opportunities to reduce overall impact of our business operations and supply chain on waste. We are focussed on increasing our recycling diversion rate from 70% to minimise landfill.

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Myer is committed to offering customers products that are sourced and produced ethically and responsibly. We have a well-established sourcing program to ensure workers’ rights, and we continuously improve our social practices within our operations and supply chain.

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Myer is committed to protecting animal welfare and the humane treatment of animals.

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Our Ethical Sourcing Policy outlines our minimum requirements to do business with Myer, and embraces the principles of the Ethical Trade Initiative (ETI) and internationally accepted labour standards of the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Myer expects its suppliers share and demonstrate the same commitment to ethical sourcing practices, and that they have management systems in place to achieve and maintain compliance within their supply chain and operations. These requirements detailed in our Supplier Code of Conduct and include recognising the rights of workers, whether in our own or suppliers network, be treated with respect and dignity, be provided a safe work environment free from discrimination, abuse, harassment, are protected against slavery or slavery like practices such as forced labour or child labour, be compensated fairly and allowed the freedom of association and right to collective bargain. The Code of Conduct applies to all manufacturers, their approved subcontractors and suppliers within the factories supply chain and operations. Factories are required to display the Code of Conduct where workers can view. These minimum requirements are also incorporated and referenced in supplier contracts.

Modern slavery describes situations where coercion, threats or deception is used to exploit and undermine people’s freedom. It refers to a range of exploitative practices such as human trafficking, slavery and slavery like practices such as servitude, forced labour, forced marriage, the sale and exploitation of children, restricted movement, and debt bondage.

We reject all forms of modern slavery or exploitation where a person cannot refuse or leave work due to threats, coercion, abuse of power, violence or deception. As one of Australia’s largest retailer groups, we have a longstanding history of fostering ongoing relationships with suppliers to ensure that we work together to address the challenges associated with safeguarding human rights. We are committed to supporting the rights and wellbeing of workers throughout our operations and supply chain, and promoting awareness of modern slavery risks.

In upholding our Ethical Sourcing Policy, all suppliers, regardless of status as a merchandise or goods and service supplier, must have processes to assess its operations and supply chain to identify and prevent potential human rights risks and impacts, and develop corrective actions to eliminate or mitigate such risks within the supply chain (both locally and globally).

We believe that the issue of human rights is a collaborative task and welcomes opportunities to build, maintain and strengthen processes and systems for respecting human rights. Examples of collaboration efforts includes the need to be transparent, share information and ensure open communication and allowing us to receive feedback and access to worker grievance mechanisms.

If a concern regarding slavery, forced or child labour, servitude, debt bondage, deceptive recruitment or any other forms of human rights abuse is identified in our operations or supply chain, we have documented processes in place to enact immediate remediation and response. In all instances the interest of the victim and any other affected parties is paramount and tailored to the specific needs of the victim, with the immediate action to remove the individual from the situation and provide necessary support. We will work with local authorities and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that necessary action is taken against the perpetrators.

To read our current Modern Slavery Statement, click here.

We require factories supplying our Private Brand goods to be audited by a third party social compliance agency, prior to onboarding and on an ongoing basis. Suppliers located in extreme risk countries, as rated against Myer’s country risk profiling, require an audit every 12 months, and those of lower risk every two years.

We recognise the operational and financial impacts of audits, and therefore offer mutual recognition of audits. We also understand that there may be times where suppliers may not fully meet our expectations and, in such instances, we are committed to working with the supplier to address and support continuous improvement. Alternative sources of supply will only be sought where there is a zero tolerance issue raised or if it is evident a supplier is unwilling or unable to adequately remediate concerns. Suppliers with high risk issues have co-operated with remediation actions.

We are committed to promoting and protecting the rights and dignity of all workers, regardless of gender which includes reducing the risk of harassment and abuse. A gender impact assessment particularly focussing on women is considered and applied to all our code of conduct requirements beyond the specific clause that deals with discrimination. Our assessment of factories ensures that the working conditions and arrangements for all workers take into account the different needs of women and men workers, and looks at how their rights can be protected. Specifically we review the percentage of women in management roles to encourage factories to promote women empowerment and rights. We also ensure that there are transparent payroll systems and workers are paid fairly, adequate for the work performed, timely and in accordance with all entitlements required by local and national laws.

We continue to assess the impact of our buying practices, and where required redesign buying practices, create long-term and sustainable relationships with suppliers and work collaborative with industry peers to create leverage and allow for collective action and engagement of social dialogue.

Many factories have established worker voice programs and worker committees or local unions to support the rights of workers. These mechanisms provide workers the ability to raise issues in local language and with anonymity. While in most instances, workers raise issues within existing factory channels, we have setup an additional QR grievance platform, in addition to our Whistleblower Program, for workers to raise issues directly with us. The QR mechanism allows workers to scan a QR code on their smartphone, this process is familiar to workers and allows them to report the issue when convenient to the worker, ie quick scan for contact at a later time.

We engage 250 tier one private brand textile and manufacturing suppliers in over 400 factories across 12 sourcing countries, including China, India, Bangladesh and Vietnam. Where issues are identified, we will always attempt to work through with the supplier to remediate and develop corrective action plans to achieve compliance. In the instance of where serious matters such as child or forced labour, we have documented remediation processes in place with priority given to the victims welfare. We reserve the right to review the business relationship in cases where a factory does not demonstrate that it is dealing ethically and responsibly.

We understand and recognise the need to go beyond audits, and regularly engage with factories and factory management through site visits and ongoing open communication. We also work with industry peers and brands that manufacture in the same factory to inform and strengthen our understanding of the social context of the factory.

Our Ethical Trading program prioritises transparency in an effort to advance human rights, ensure workers are respected and their rights are protected, and reducing modern slavery risks. Transparency means knowing where our private brand products are made and making this information publicly available.

We have also partnered with a third party certification company to assist us in verifying the fibres used in our products to provide transparency on areas of focus.

Our Private Brand factory listing, can be found here. The supplier list includes factory names, locations, types of goods produced, and numbers of workers, and covers our direct vendors. We update our supplier list every six months with the information received from our mapping and audit process.

We support and are committed to working towards living wages, freedom of association and collective bargaining, which includes promoting worker opportunities to receive a fair wage. As part of our commitment, we continue to work on improving our purchasing practices and ethical sourcing standards to assist suppliers towards paying a living wage for factory workers and create long-term and sustainable relationships.

The Global Living Wage Coalition defines a Living Wage as “The remuneration received for a standard workweek by a worker in a particular place sufficient to afford a decent standard of living for the worker and her or his family. Elements of a decent standard of living include food, water, housing, education, health care, transportation, clothing, and other essential needs including provision for unexpected events.”

Challenges

Currently there is no clear benchmark to measure or determine what constitutes a living wage in each region, city, province or country that we source or manufacture goods, however progress through ongoing and open dialogue and reviews has been made. We continuously review and assess methodologies to calculate a living wage to ensure consistency, sustainability and fair calculation of a living wage. In the absence of a single global methodology to calculate living wage, we reference the benchmarks set out by the Anker Methodology where available, and wageindicator.org as an additional resource.

Some of the challenges with establishing a living wage include restrictions on freedom of association and collective bargaining laws and mechanisms in some countries that fundamentally limit the ability of a worker to organise advocate and negotiate fair and sustainable wage increases. Other challenges include benchmark due to location, change in economic conditions and foreign exchange movements, taxation, commodity cost fluctuations, property cost movements, changes to government policies, and petrol and transportation cost variations. It should be noted that the paying of higher prices for finished goods does not necessarily result in higher wages for workers, as the vendor is responsible for passing on the benefit to the worker. We will explore options to address this through separation of labour costs in the overall purchase price of product.

Our Progress

We understand that our purchasing practices can have a direct impact on the wages earned by our suppliers' workers. As a result, we provide training to our buying teams so that they incorporate ethical sourcing and sustainability criteria’s into their business decisions. We commit to supporting our factories by providing training on the importance of paying fair living wages and what it means for their workers. Our audit program also assesses and asks factories to establish a living wage calculation.

We will monitor progress of our factories as part of our living wage tracker, which records factories that are paying a living wage, those that are paying above minimum wage and factories paying a minimum wage. The living wage tracker will be used to analyse any wage gaps of our factories. We will consult with factories where a living wage has been identified and share learnings with other factories to assist them in paying a living wage. Our research will also be used to improve our understanding and how we can help mitigate some of challenges associated with paying a living wage.

We will work with our direct factories, who we have the most leverage, to assist them in establishing actions and a roadmap to paying a living wage. This will primarily be achieved through

• improving purchasing practices including ensuring fair terms of payment, reasonable critical path timelines etc
• better planning and forecasting
• providing a grievance or worker voice mechanism,
• supporting factories to proactively adopt a freedom of association policy
• promoting a gender equality policy and practices
• respect the rights of workers to collectively bargain
• encourage non-government organisations (NGOs) to assist in training and communicating workers on freedom of association and collective bargaining

We recognise that multi stakeholder initiatives are the best way to drive change and believe that sustainable improvements in wages can only be achieved collectively. As such we are committed to working collaboratively with industry peers to create leverage and allow for collective action and engagement of social dialogue. We also support and encourage governments to raise minimum wages to close any gaps between minimum wages and living wages, and to respect the freedom of association and collective bargaining.

We are conscious of our environmental impact and continue to work towards doing better by exploring and choosing more sustainable fabrics, fibres and using recycled materials where possible, and limiting waste created as part of our manufacturing and our operations. Our assessment of environmental impacts are embedded and considered into product design to ensure longevity, durability, lifecycle of products, minimisation of water and energy resources, reduction of material waste and wastewater discharge and chemical intensive processes. This includes reducing product packaging, as well as encouraging re-use and recycle, and providing appropriate disposal information.

We work with our factories to ensure, at minimum meet the requirements of local and national laws related to environmental standards, and have a process to assess, measure and manage environmental impacts (eg energy use, water use, waste, discharge of natural resources) and risks resulting from their operations and supply chain. We continue to work with factories to improve and ensure that factory environmental risk impact assessments and management plans are in place, and where required we work back with the factory to monitor progress.