"Ethical fashion report collars Australian brands over environment and workers’ rights", 18 October 2021

...Myer is disputing its poor grading in an ethical fashion assessment which found the company is falling short when it comes to reducing its environmental impact and ensuring its supply chains are free of modern-day slavery...

While Myer received a D rating overall, it scored an F for worker empowerment and environmental sustainability.

According to the report, the company failed to demonstrate evidence that any of its final stage manufacturing facilities paid workers living wages, had programs to increase wages or “published a credible commitment to pay living wages,” complete with a timeline and key milestones.

In the previous report, Myer earned a D+ in both this and the environmental category. A spokesperson for the company objected to the new grades, stating Myer continued to require all suppliers to adhere to a “stringent ethical sourcing policy”.

“[The new grades] fail to accurately reflect our program and the continuous improvements made, with the result also being inconsistent with the results and benchmarking of previous years,” he said.

“… We will meet with the Baptists to better understand their significant change in the evaluation of our sourcing program, especially in a year where further improvements were made to the program.”

While director of advocacy at Baptist World Aid Australia, Peter Keegan, did not wish to speak directly about Myer, he defended the report’s 2021 assessments, stating the ethical criteria continues to evolve as the fashion industry becomes more aware of its endemic problems.

“This year, for example, we introduced some new questions around modern slavery with the introduction of the [new Australian] modern slavery act. We [also] increased the weighting and the number of questions in the environmental section,” he said...

...RM Williams, scraped by with an overall D grading but also failed to demonstrate evidence that any of its final stage manufacturing facilities paid a living wage to workers...

RM William’s chief managing officer, Chris Willingham, said the report “paints a highly inaccurate picture” of the company.

“This year’s score is the result of the 2021 survey not being completed given significant changes at the company over the past 12 months. Now that the business has returned to Australian ownership...we are committed to operating in a wholly transparent fashion,” he said...

Other brands, such as... SHEIKE, which received an F in every category, suggested that not participating contributed to their poor performances.

“Unfortunately, this year we did not have the internal resource to engage with Baptist World Aid to participate in the report,” said SHEIKE general manager, Sandra Kennedy...