Overview
Labour citizenship represents the active dimension of a brand’s relationship with its workers and the broader global labour movement. While standard labour assessments focus on compliance with laws or internal codes, labour citizenship evaluates how a brand goes beyond the bare minimum to advocate for systemic improvements, remediate past harms, and protect workers during global crises.
This area is critical because a brand’s public commitments to ethics are often tested by its actions in response to real-world incidents. High performance in labour citizenship indicates that a brand is not just a passive observer of its supply chain but a proactive advocate for the empowerment and protection of the people who make its products or deliver its services.
Industry verticals: Fashion, Beauty, Services, Retailer
Applicable for: large brands
What is assessed?
Good On You assesses three primary aspects within labour citizenship: positive advocacy and initiatives, crisis response, and remediation of major incidents.
Positive advocacy and leadership
Brands are evaluated on their involvement in initiatives that drive improvements in working conditions, worker assurance, and empowerment. This includes:
Participating in international campaigns to drive global supply chain improvements
Participation in programs that specifically assist or empower workers
Acting as an active public advocate for labour issues
Demonstrating support for employees during natural disasters or wars
Remediation and accountability
Good On You assesses whether a brand has been involved in major incidents breaching workers' rights within the last five years. If an incident has occurred, the assessment focuses on the brand's response:
Whether the brand implemented industry-accepted remediation steps
Whether the brand paid fair financial compensation to affected workers
Actions taken to prevent the recurrence of the breach
Crisis management: COVID-19
The methodology assesses the specific actions taken to protect the livelihoods and safety of workers during the economic disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Whilst the height of the pandemic was over in 2022, the impacts of how a brand approached protecting its suppliers and workers still reverberate today. Brands that took strong measures, even at a heavy financial cost to themselves, remain rewarded for demonstrating leadership.
Assessments in industry verticals
Fashion
In the Fashion vertical, labour citizenship is highly material due to the industry’s reliance on complex, globalised supply chains where the risk of forced labour and order cancellations is high.
The assessment reviews major incidents over the past 5 years
Fashion brands are specifically assessed on how they manage the risk of sourcing cotton from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Brands are penalised if they source from this region without remediation, or if they fail to disclose their sourcing status
Extra credit is given to brands achieving Fair Wear Foundation Leader status
Fashion-specific items assess whether brands adopt CIPRI's 3 Cs (consent, credit, and compensation) when working with Indigenous artisan communities or preserving material culture for fragile groups
Beauty
The Beauty vertical focuses on the specific commodities (eg mica, palm oil, shea) that are prone to labour exploitation, including child labour.
The assessment reviews major incidents over the past 5 years
Evaluation includes involvement in international campaigns specific to the global beauty supply chain
Brands are rewarded for leadership in programs that empower workers involved in raw material extraction, such as those in the shea industry
Retailer
For Retailers, the focus is on direct operations and the protection of retail staff, alongside supply chain oversight.
The assessment reviews major incidents over the past 5 years.
COVID-19 assessments prioritise direct operations, rewarding brands that provided full salary continuation during lockdowns regardless of work-from-home ability, or those that implemented comprehensive health and safety protocols
Services
Similar to Retail, the Services vertical (eg cinemas, travel agents) emphasises the brand's role as an employer and its direct impact on non-executive staff and contractors.
Reviews incidents over the past 5 years
Brands are rewarded for demonstrating support for employees during crises such as natural disasters or wars
Points are awarded for protecting vulnerable groups, such as those with health risks or caregivers, through specific pay protection measures
Disclosure and data sources
Good On You primarily relies on a brand’s public website and formal sustainability, CSR, or ESG reports. In addition, for citizenship we reference:
NGOs or investigative journalists' reports
MSI membership list
Regulatory bodies
Good On You will review old disclosures (up to five years) for the purposes of assessing a brand’s crisis management. The brand is not expected to report annually on this issue as it may not keep updating on what it did several years ago (eg in response to COVID-19).
Relevance for different brands
The assessment of citizenship is contextual and depends on a brand’s size and the nature of its operations.
Large brands
Are held to a higher standard when it comes to people negative citizenship. Large brands are historically more likely to have labour rights scandals or to have been reported for misleading claims.
Small brands
More likely to have business models centred on human rights or artisan engagement, and, as such, are more likely to be rewarded for having purpose-built social missions.
Best practice and common pitfalls
High-performance principles
The best-performing brands acknowledge when a breach has occurred and demonstrate that they have paid fair compensation and changed internal processes to prevent recurrence
Leadership in international campaigns must be more than tokenistic membership; it should involve active participation in driving industry standards
Common pitfalls
Brands often claim to be "committed to workers' rights" without disclosing the specific programs or the percentage of their supply chain covered
Being a member of a labour rights organisation is not sufficient. Brands should demonstrate they take an active leadership role and the changes that have been made to the industry because of that leadership
A common error is disclosing COVID-19 protections that only applied to head-office staff while neglecting retail staff or supply chain workers
Brands may claim they "remediated", but if the workers were not fully compensated for the loss of income, it does not count as full remediation