Other Support Services

Fair Labour Association (FLA) Social Auditing

Phulki is an accredited paid monitor of the FLA. The FLA grew out of the Apparel Industry Partnership (AIP), which was an initiative of U.S. President Bill Clinton, established in 1996 to address labour rights standards in the apparel industry. The FLA has as members around a dozen of the largest and best-known companies that market garments and shoes. In addition to companies, participating organisations include about 175 US-based colleges and universities. The FLA Charter Agreement outlines an industry-wide code of conduct and monitoring system. The FLA accredits the independent monitors, verifies that companies are in compliance with the code of conduct, and serves as a source of information for the public.

As an accredited FLA monitor, Phulki carries out social audits of FLA member companies and evaluates each factory's code of compliance in order for the Association to suggest ways to improve their facilities. For more information on the FLA, please visit www.fairlabor.org.

Garments Factory Monitoring

In addition to the FLA social auditing, Phulki also monitors factory compliance under the International Code of Conduct for non-FLA garments industries. Under this activity, workspace based environment and worker’s safety issues, such as, ventilation, lighting, access to drinking water, fire extinguishers etc; and; worker’s rights related issues, such as, employment related documents, payroll, working hours, and benefit records and factory’s policies and procedures are audited.

Consultancy for Factory Based Childcare Services

Phulki brings new factory based day-care centres into operation on the understanding that the employers themselves will ultimately sustain the project. During the one-month start-up support period, Phulki will train a supervisor of the factory who has been nominated by the factory management to run the centre once Phulki have withdrawn. After the centre has been brought into operation, the factory owner can either appoint Phulki as a consultant for one year; or elect to operate the crèche independently.

Under the one year consultancy, the employer will appoint Phulki as a management consultant to continue the management, supervision and care givers training for the childcare centre. In order to operate the crèche independently, the employer will have complete responsibility for the expenditure and management of the childcare centre.

Technical Support to Public and Private Sector for Childcare

Phulki offers the same services provided to manufacturing factory owners, to other public and private sector businesses. This includes the establishment of the childcare centres and operational support. Phulki has established of childcare centres government departments and private organizations who continue to use Phulki's consultancy services.

Poster and Documentary Development for H & M

Henns & Maurietz AB, a renowned buying house, wanted to work with 5 component among the 15 issue of our RMG sector. Those are –

1. Leave and written document
2. Maternity leave
3. Harassment
4. Overtime
5. Health & safety.

Phulki did poster develop, documentary script develop, field test of posters and documentaries, and module develop on the process of documentary and conduct session.

Supply Sanitary Napkins for Garments Workers

To build up awareness on positive hygiene practice during the menstrual period of poor women and girl and to support for being relief from menstrual infections in long run and to make the sanitary napkin available and affordable for the stakeholders of low-income family Phulki has start this project. The goal of this project is “Wider dissemination of positive practice of menstrual hygiene management system focused on practical and strategic needs of women and girl through producting and supplying sanitary napkin at an affordable rate”. And this demand is increasing day by day. At present Phulki is supplying sanitary napkins to 5 garments.

Training on Promotion of Responsible Representatives of Workers and Management

The poor quality, or indeed absence, of in-house communication structures and channels can have a significant negative impact on the effectiveness of worker participation and representation, which in turn can lead to an increased risk of conflict, barriers to continuous improvement, and masking of inefficient work processes. In recognition of the general low level of worker organization and representation in Bangladeshi factories, the FLA has introduced the PREPARE project.

Participants are talking with garments management during practical class of training	Certificate giving ceremony at PREPARE training

For many years, Bangladesh exempted its Export Processing Zones (EPZ) from the law that granted workers the right to organize and bargain collectively. In 2004, the government passed legislation that would restore these rights, but implementation and enforcement of these laws have been weak to date. There remains a widespread lack of awareness regarding collective bargaining rights among workers and managers, particularly in the ready-made goods industries. The PREPARE project was originally conceived to run exclusively with factories located in the Dhaka EPZ, however the project team has also been successful in recruiting factories located outside it.

The key objectives of the project are to improve the efficacy of worker representation in factories by:

1. Providing a platform for labor-management dialogue;
2. Establishing a system of communication, consultation, and negotiation
3. Providing capacity training to worker representatives and factory management on their roles and responsibilities;
4. Promoting a sustainable training model that will ensure that all workers and supervisors in the factory receive regular training on local labor laws. 

The project is expected to run for 18 months and will employ trainers from a locally-based training organization called Phulki, who will work directly with individuals at all levels of the factory – owners, managers, supervisors, workers and worker representatives – using a “top-down bottom-up” approach. The project's success will be measurable in the ability of participating factories to be able to identify and resolve problems which have an effect on compliance.

Tools developed for FLA 3.0, the FLA 's new sustainable compliance methodology, will be customized to measure the impact of the project. During the project commencement phase, a baseline assessment of the efficacy of existing communications structures and channels will be arrived at using SCAT (a self-assessment tool for management) and SCOPE (a tool for assessing worker perspectives on the same issues as tested by SCAT). Similar tools measuring Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are inbuilt in the methodology that will be used to measure impact over a period of time.

In order to achieve the goal of this project FLA successfully conduct a Training Of Trainers in collaboration with Sustainability Agents (a Berlin-Based consultancy firm that specialized in implementation of social and labor standards in global supply chain)on April 26-30,2008. The workshop was held in Dhaka: Bangladesh .

Phulki and T-group Solutions from India, both FLA-accredited monitoring organizations, was trained over a period of five days to prepare them for their tasks in the project. The participants received training on problem-solving, analysis of communication channels and the use of innovative techniques for improving communication in organizations. The role of trainers as facilitator was discussed

• Compliance improvement (Suggest)
• Supply sanitary napkins for garments workers