Corporate Social Responsibility issues are considered as keydrivers of brand recognition and growth of American Apparel.
Corporate culture and employment
• Nowadays the number of employees worldwide is nearly 10 000 people and American Apparel doesn’t use labor outsourcing;
• Company pays one of the highest salaries to its factory workers. In comparison other American companies operating in China are paying in average 40 cents, while American Apparel is paying 12 dollars per hour. Moreover there are such benefits as health care, lunches, bus passes, free English additional language classes, massage therapists, free bicycles, free parking, proper lighting and ventilation, long distance phone calls;
• Employees in foreign countries doesn’t get the same as in USA salaries, but in developing countries such as China employees are guaranteed to get minimum USA wage;
• After going public, the company offered employees as much as $40 million in stock shares. The plan grants employees roughly 1 share of stock for every workday they had spent at the company;
• Active usage of "team manufacturing" gives some kind of freedom to the strongest employees of the company, as they control themselves their daily production schedule and hourly wages. Such type of labor organization allowed American Apparel to triple its garment production (to produce 1 million shirts per week and manufacture 275,000 pieces a day), without significant staff increase.
• The creative personnel of American Apparel is hired according their sense of culture and fashion, not their CVs. Moreover the company was even criticized by focusing on appearance and style in recruiting its retail staff.
• But according to Dov Charney unconventional corporate culture is the main driver of company's creativity and growth.
Immigration issues
• In 2001, American Apparel acted like vocal advocate for reform of U.S. immigration laws;
• Company actively supports its immigrated personnel to participate in different protests and meetings dedicated to pro - immigration issues;
• Immigration support also follows company’s ads.
Environmental policies
• American Apparel depends on environmentally friendly practices and uses innovations in sustainability due to vertical integration;
• American Apparel manufacturing system is designed around the concept of "Creative Reuse"—which converts excess fabric from one garment template into several additional garments. This leads to the waste reducing and helps company to save about 30,000 pounds of cotton per week;
• It uses bicycle lending program for its employees and is a vegan-friendly clothing company (organic clothes);
• American Apparel uses solar electric systems on the factory roof and recycles its fabric scraps
2 комментария:
Corporate culture of American Apparel is really fascinating and corresponds well with values of active young people. But in big Russian cities (especially Moscow) the attitude to immigration policy is very different and situation becomes more and more difficult every year. Thus, maybe it is reasonable not to make accent on support of immigration.
But on the other hand, if American Apparel uses their practices here, it will help to develop some legal issues about immigration or at least will create perception of the differences between illegal immigration (or even formally legal, but just formally) when workers live in enormous quantities in just one flat and so on and the normal practice of working abroad. I think American Apparel workers are quite different from common immigrants here in Russia and company itself will lose from using this image and will create different one.
But I think we have no immigration protests and so on and this theme is not actual here and company will be able to hire foreign employees if needed without any problems. Especially if consider their more than comfortable work conditions.
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