YESS is Changing to a Membership Model. This is Why.
An initiative that aims to drive forced labor out of the cotton supply chain is transitioning from a scheme platform to a membership model.
The move is the result of popular demand, said Emilie Jakobson, stakeholder coordinator at the Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN), which operates Yarn Ethically & Sustainably Sourced, better known as YESS, using a risk-based due diligence approach as outlined by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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In a recent survey of brands, retailers, spinners, fabric mills and civil society groups that the California-based nonprofit conducted, 70 percent of respondents opted for the shift, which they overwhelmingly agreed would create a greater number of opportunities for more stakeholders to engage while removing the need for an agreement to be signed every year.
More than 20 brand and retail sponsors have helped the nearly four-year-old initiative get to “this point, which we’re grateful for,” said Patricia Jurewicz, founder and CEO of RSN. To date, YESS has published one standard for spinners and another for fabric mills.
The benefits of membership are multifold, Jakobson said. Members, for one, will be able to train and enable spinners and fabric mills to implement effective due diligence systems. They’ll be able to maintain a global list of verified spinners and fabric mills, collaborate to minimize verification costs and improve efficiencies, and increase the marketability of spinners, fabric mills and brands that source ethical cotton.
“One of the key aspects of the feedback we’ve received is that stakeholders…want to collaborate on opportunities to implement due diligence, and in particular to prevent and mitigate risk, and, if necessary, remediate the harm,” she said. “We know this is particularly difficult in the upstream supply chain…and the need will continue to grow as the mandatory due diligence legislation comes into force.”
YESS is offering five participatory tiers based on the type and size of the member organization, with yearly dues that range from $250 for academic groups and non-governmental organizations to $20,000 for large companies making more than $100 million in annual revenue. The cost of YESS assessments, which go to the third-party auditors conducting them, is covered separately. Dues and benefits may also change as YESS increases its membership base and expands its offerings.
The program will require brands and retailers to engage at least two spinning and fabric mills in their supply chain and help them prepare for and participate in the YESS assessments, which have multiple checkpoints throughout the year in which they are conducted.
“So this means that you will work closely with mills to ensure that they will join YESS, go through the training, schedule a date for the YESS assessment and do the follow-up improvements,” Jakobson said.
Going through the paces of YESS isn’t easy. The typical process for a mill to be verified takes three years, with the first focusing on management systems, the second on risk mitigation plans and the third on remediation. Even after that, conformance must be assessed regularly, if not annually.
“We understand that due diligence is difficult to understand and implement and this is…something that folks, especially [those] in the middle of those supply chain—spinning mills and fabric mills—have never had to do before,” Jurewicz said. “So we’re all about trying to provide the necessary tools, resources, templates [and] checklists to implement due diligence as it’s expected.”
After participating in pilots with Verité’s STREAMS (Supply Chain Tracing & Engagement Methodologies) in India and with Elevate’s Global Trace Protocol project in Pakistan this year, RSN’s goal is to scale YESS, though this will require further capacity building and training, not only with the spinners and fabric mills but also with the audit community, since a due diligence assessment isn’t the same as a social compliance audit.
“Not only [are we] looking at the cotton sourcing happening within the facility, but it’s a much more flexible, conversational approach, where the facility is given more flexibility in setting up its own systems and procedures,” Jurewicz said. “It’s not a check-the-box approach. It’s one that works with the facility [so it can] implement [its] own management systems and then create a risk mitigation plan that it could improve upon each year.”
India and Pakistan aside, YESS has its sights on Bangladesh and Vietnam in the coming months. Turkey, due to its proximity to Turkmenistan, a cotton forced-labor hotspot, is another possibility, though four locations are likely enough for the moment.
“If there’s the opportunity to expand beyond four countries next year and early 2025, we will, but we also know that there’s a lot of mills in these four countries alone, and so we want to make sure that we’re both educating the auditors appropriately [and] the mills appropriately,” she said. “We want to set people up for success.”
As the program builds out its staff, which will include a new director of program development in a few weeks, Jurewicz also sees the initiative expanding beyond cotton or even textiles in the future.
“We’ve got our blinders on today of really focusing on forced labor as the risk and cotton as the material, but we could be focusing on other human rights, labor rights, even environmental risks,” Jurewicz said. “The due diligence approach of identifying and addressing risks, the basics and the framework [are] the same no matter what the material.”
