SA8000 is the first international certification that measures the ethic behaviour of a certain company both nationally and internationally. COOSS Cooperativa Sociale actively promotes and develops a socially responsible working environment, enabling personal and professional growth of all its employees.
This management system aims at enhancing and safeguarding all of the COOSS workforce. In order to reach this important goal, COOSS has produced a management systems standard which involves all of its members, associates, employees, suppliers and stakeholders (both internal and external). For these reasons, the SA8000 certification is a key tool as it streamlines the complexities of navigating industry and corporate codes to create a common language and standard for measuring social compliance. As it can be applied worldwide to any company in any industry, it is an extremely useful way of measuring, comparing, and verifying social accountability in the workplace.
This important certification requires compliance with eight performance criteria:
- Child Labor: no use or support of child labor
- Forced and Compulsory Labor: no use or support for forced or compulsory labor
- Health and Safety: provide a safe and healthy workplace
- Freedom of Association and Right to Collective Bargaining: respect the right to form and join trade unions and bargain collectively
- Discrimination: no discrimination based on race, national or social origin, caste, birth, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, union membership, political opinions and age
- Disciplinary Practices: treat all personnel with dignity and respect
- Working Hours: compliance with laws & industry standards
- Remuneration: respect right of personnel to living wage
COOSS Marche historically promotes an innovative management system, according to which the workforce is not seen as a resource to be exploited but as a human entity to invest upon and to respect in its rights, dignity and well-being. The best way to do so is by creating a respectful, stimulating and pleasant working environment for the entire workforce. SA8000 is an ideal tool both for the company and for the employees, in order to develop internationally accepted and recognized working conditions, whose main characteristics have been listed above.
The main advantages of SA8000 are:
- Increased company credibility and improved reputation in the market
- Higher consumers’ trust and better relationships with social and political Institutions and Organizations
- Suppliers’ ethic and social reliability
- Better internal environment, more focused workforce
- More efficient and clear communication thanks to publicly available reports
For more information:
Social Performance Team – COOSS MARCHE ONLUS
Via Saffi, 4 – 60121 Ancona – Tel and Fax 071 50103260 – Mail sa8000@cooss.marche.it
Management representative: MARTA ZEPPARONI
Workforce representative: MARCO PAIALUNGA
