Social Accountability International (SAI) is a non-profit standards setting organization that promotes human rights for workers around the world. To achieve this goal, they issue SA8000 certificates to factories in a variety of industries. SA8000′s guiding principles are based on international workplace norms of the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.   

In a recent collaboration with SAI, Panjiva compared the scores of factories in its database that are SA8000-certified with those that are not. We discovered that the mean rating for SA8000-certified factories is 70.7 out of 100, while the mean rating for all factories (excluding those we have ‘not rated’ because they only have a handful of shipments) is 49.03. So simplistically, SA8000-certified factories have a 44% higher rating on average than non-SA8000-certified factories. Conclusions? As our numbers indicate, SA8000 certification can go a long way in distinguishing a factory from the huge universe of competitors. 

For more information on the analyses Panjiva did of SA8000-certified factories and others, you can contact our team at research@panjiva.com. To learn more about the work SAI is doing to promote labor rights visit their website.