Ethical guidelines for suppliers
We aim for high ethical and environmental standards, both within Yell and throughout our supply chain. We require all our Suppliers to commit to our Ethical Guidelines for Suppliers (“Guidelines”) and to promote the same high standards in their supply chains. These Guidelines are based on internationally recognised standards set out in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Labour Organisation Conventions.These Guidelines relate to all Suppliers to our UK operations and form part of our approach to corporate responsibility in Yell.
Ethical Standards
i. Compliance with all laws: As a Supplier or potential Supplier to Yell, we expect you to comply with all national, European Union and International laws and regulations in relation to ethical employment and trading.
ii. Exploitative child labour is eliminated: We believe giving young people opportunities in the working environment is crucial for their development, and would not wish to limit this; however, we believe it must be done subject to national laws on the employment of minors and in any event in a responsible way.
We expect that your organisation:
- Employs no person below the minimum legal age for employment;
- Does not employ any young persons (under 18 years) at night or for any hazardous work;
- Will make the best interests of the young person your primary consideration where a young person of less than 18 years is employed, and will ensure the employment does not adversely harm the young person’s education, health or physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development; and
- Policies and programmes that assist any child found to be performing child labour are supported and developed to enable the child to remain in education until no longer a child.
We expect that your organisation:
- Does not use forced, bonded or compulsory labour and workers are able to leave their employment after reasonable notice has been served; and
- Does not require workers to lodge deposits of money to secure their position.
- You must ensure that all workers are treated fairly and with dignity and respect; and
- No worker should receive less favourable treatment in respect of their employment on the grounds of race, gender, religion or belief, any disability, marital status, national origin, sexual orientation, age or the fact that they are a part time or fixed term worker, or be disadvantaged by conditions or requirements which cannot be shown to be justifiable. These Guidelines should also apply to recruitment of persons from outside the workplace and the treatment of contract workers.
- All workers must be free to join, or not to join trade unions or similar external representative organisations; and
- All workers must be informed and consulted in accordance with national laws.
We expect your organisation to:
- Provide a healthy and safe working environment for all workers in accordance with international standards and national laws;
- Provide access to clean toilet facilities, drinkable water and, if applicable sanitary facilities for food storage;
- Provide a work environment for all workers that is free from health and safety risks as far as is reasonably practical;
- Identify hazards at the earliest opportunity and the most effective, preventative action implemented immediately; and
- Provide the appropriate level of health and safety information, instruction, training and supervision to all workers as and when required to minimise all risks.
We expect you to:
- Ensure all workers receive written understandable information on their employment conditions prior to entering employment and the particulars of their wages for the pay period concerned each time that they are paid, and
- Ensure that wages paid for a standard working week meet or exceed national legal standards and
- Prohibit the deductions from wages as a disciplinary measure.
- Standard working hours shall comply with national laws and not be excessive.
- To every extent possible we expect you to ensure that any work undertaken is performed on the basis of a recognised employment relationship established through national law and practice; and
- We expect you to meet your obligations to employees under labour or social security laws, and regulations arising from the regular employment relationship should not be avoided. Examples include the abuse of labour-only contracting or sub-contracting, excessive repetition in the use of fixed term contracts where there is no intent to provide regular employment.
- We expect you to treat your workers with respect and dignity. Physical or verbal abuse or harassment on the grounds of race, gender, religion or belief, disability, marital status, national origin or age and any threats or other forms of intimidation must be prohibited.
Environmental Standards
Compliance with all environmental laws: As a Supplier or potential Supplier to Yell, we expect you to comply with all national, European Union or International laws in relation to the environment.
Environmental Efficiency: We are committed to proactively managing and reducing the impact of our business on both the local and global environment and to increasing its environmental sustainability.
We expect you to have in place and apply policies and processes to continuously identify and act on opportunities to:
- Reduce your business’ resource consumption including:
- Energy (gas, electricity and solid fuels)
- Office materials such as paper, toner cartridges, plastic cups and containers, drink cans, fluorescent tubes
- Any other finite raw materials applicable to your business;
- Minimise the waste generated by your business and seek to reduce, recover or recycle waste generated by your business;
- Where waste from your business is disposed of to seek and use an environmentally sound disposal option; and
- Yell expects our key production partners to have ISO 14001 certification or be actively working towards this international environmental standard.
- Yell expects all Suppliers to commit to these Guidelines on a voluntary basis initially (“Voluntary Period”) and from 1st September 2005 these Guidelines will be considered as a mandatory requirement for working with Yell. From time to time Yell may conduct ad hoc assessments to ensure such Guidelines are being upheld.
- We expect our Suppliers to provide adequate training and guidelines to implement the recognised standards reflected in these Guidelines and a process in place to ensure the standards are upheld.
- We expect our production partners to provide environmental data regarding their operations and they will be encouraged to improve if there are any areas of poor performance.
- During the Voluntary Period for any Supplier that falls below the recognised standards and does not adhere to these Guidelines, Yell may work collaboratively with them to achieve these standards where appropriate, rather than penalising them.
- If after the Voluntary Period in the extreme event of a Supplier persistently failing to take corrective action within agreed timescales, thereby failing to show a real commitment to these Guidelines, Yell reserves the right to terminate any contract with the organisation on seven (7) calendar days notice in writing.
