This month in the Washington Monthly, TA Frank writes a very interesting piece on factory conditions in China called Confessions of a Sweatshop Inspector (h/t CSR Asia). With one of the key tenants of CSR, and Crossroads, being labor I highly suggest readers take the time to make their way through this article as it is written not from the journalist perspective.. but from a former auditor turned journalist. using his experience to address a larger topic - how to regulate labor compliance, and how to enforce it - Frank’s provides a window into some of the adminstration of labor compliance and inspctions.. getting client buy in, the motivations of clients, the difficulties of getting suppliers to open up, the cat/ mouse game of interviews… and so on. On of the more honest paragraphs is:

For the half-assed company there are also half-assed monitoring firms. These specialize in performing as many brief, understaffed inspections as they can fit in a day in order to maximize their own profits. That gives their clients plausible deniability: problems undiscovered are problems avoided, and any later trouble can be blamed on the compliance monitors. It is a cozy understanding between client, monitoring company, and supplier that manages to benefit everyone but the workers.

It is another angle that I think complements the movies A Decent Factory and China Blue