Respect for the principles of freedom of association and collective bargaining is not an end in itself. It enables the development of mature industrial relations, where workers are empowered to determine their own needs and priorities and to participate with management in decision-making about them...Yet there is still little progress towards achieving widespread compliance with this fundamental principle of the ETI Base Code in global supply chains. Among the reasons why this is so appears to be not only the mistrust and fear of suppliers in many countries, but also a poor general perception of unions in the UK, and the fact that UK businesses have little understanding of how unions operate and how a unionised workforce can benefit suppliers’ businesses. [Refers to Inditex, Riverrich]