The ALDI SOUTH Group continues to be committed to the prevention, identification, and remediation of child labour in all areas of our operations – including our supply chains. In 2021, we implemented several activities to eliminate child labour and bring our Vision 2030 alive.
Prevention
As part of our due diligence process and commitment in ensuring children and young workers are protected from economic exploitation, the ALDI SOUTH Group published its “ALDI Child Labour Policy” in 2019 to prevent non-compliances from occurring in our supply chains.
In 2021, we launched a practical guidance paper for non-food suppliers in high-risk supply chains to help them build their management systems on identifying, preventing, or remediating child labour in their production sites. Following our successful pilot in non-food supply chains, we plan to present a child labour guidance paper for food suppliers in our high-risk supply chains.
Identification
We are aware that there is always more to do and having a prevention policy is only one of many steps. We need to assess our high-risk commodity group supply chains for human rights violations. Either through third party audits or ALDI Social Assessments (ASAs), we constantly assess our suppliers’ production sites to identify and remediate child labour cases.
We also evaluate our own high-risk food and non-food suppliers to ensure that they have strong management systems that can prevent, identify and remediate any child labour cases. We work together with our suppliers to implement ALDI’s Corporate Responsibility (CR) requirements in our supply chains, leveraging on their direct relationship and influence over their own production sites.
Remediation
The Centre for Child Rights and Business has been our remediation partner for all ALDI production facilities since 2019, and we have jointly defined a remediation process with clear roles and responsibilities for all stakeholders: We always put the child’s interest first.
Projects for beyond compliance
In 2021, we signed a joint pledge alongside industry peers and our partner “The Centre” to support the UN’s “International Year for the Elimination of Child Labour” and to emphasise the importance of the worldwide elimination of child labour.
We also launched a child labour e-learning training for all our high-risk non-food suppliers and implemented a virtual workshop for 36 selected non-food Chinese suppliers, designed to improve their capacities to eliminate child labour cases in their production facilities.
