SA8000 Standard Recognition

Mutual, partial, and one-sided recognition of social compliance programs consolidates efforts across standards and codes, and can reduce the amount of resources required for their implementation. SAI actively seeks opportunities to align the SA8000 certification with systems provided by other organizations.

SA8000 Recognized By Brands

SAI works closely with several brands that have decided to accept the SA8000® Standard as part of their social compliance program. These companies have found several benefits in recognizing SA8000 in lieu of conducting their own audits.

Some of the advantages include:

• SAI’s regular revisions ensure the Standard’s continued relevance in the face of new and emerging social and human rights issues.
• The Standard emphasizes strong management systems that encourage facilities to continuously measure their social performance and improvement.
• Recognizing the Standard can result in significant savings in audit costs and in an opportunity to allocate resources more effectively to those facilities that need more support.
• The accredited SA8000 certification system provides an additional, independent layer of oversight to assure all SA8000 audits are conducted in a fair, reliable, and consistent manner.

Brands that recognize SA8000

The following is a list of brands and retailers that accept SA8000 (in part or in whole) in lieu of their own social compliance program. If you know of a brand that accepts SA8000 that is not included on this list, or if you notice an error on the list, please contact [email protected].

SA8000 Recognized By Governments

ISEAL Alliance: Governmental Use of Voluntary Standards Case Study 10: Tuscany Region (Italy) and the SA8000 Standard for Social Accountability (2008)

Business Social Compliance Initiative

The Foreign Trade Association’s Business Social Compliance Initiative (BSCI) recognizes the SA8000® Standard as a credible system for BSCI participants to detect and monitor labor conditions in their supply chains. BSCI participants sourcing from organizations that are SA8000-certified may include this information in the BSCI IT Platform to avoid audit duplication.

Global Social Compliance Programme

SAI has completed the Consumer Goods Forum’s Global Social Compliance Programme’s GSCP Equivalence Process and the comparison of SA8000:2008 against the GSCP Reference Code (social). The SA8000:2014 Standard will be going through the same process.

The results of the equivalence process have been published to increase the transparency of the SA8000® Standard. SAI hopes that the process helps reduce the duplication of audits by increasing the recognition and acceptance of SA8000 as a certification by a variety of buyers, initiatives, and standard-setting bodies.

The GSCP Equivalence Process is a benchmarking system against the GSCP Reference Tools. Its purpose is to drive continuous improvement in the content of standards while preserving their specificities. The process begins with a self-assessment of internal tools and processes against the GSCP tools. After that, gaps in requirements or implementation processes are identified. Finally, users are able to make improvements to their standard and tools were they see fit.

GSCP Equivalence Process Results: SA8000:2008 Standard

80 percent of the grades were either A or A+ showing equivalency between SA8000:2008 and the GSCP criteria. More specifically, SAI’s grades in the process were as follows:

• 12 A+ (27%)
• 24 A (53%)
• 8 B (18%)
• 1 C (2%)

The detailed results can be accessed here. Some lower grades are due to specific wording, not the rigor of the Standard, which is why SAI has chosen to add its own comments to the results.