October 2022

ZARA
(Group Inditex)
Proposal
Strategic plan to improve their
employees' working conditions

Prepared by: Maite Lara

Business Writing: section 1
Executive Summary
Factory labor exploitation is a taboo subject
that few brands want to address. However, at
Zara, we want to address this major issue. We
have recently had a small but connected role
in incidents of factory-produced worker
exploitation. The first issue that a company
encounters when conducting a control to try
to solve this problem is identifying its
suppliers. In our case, for example, there are
over 7,000. Labor rights and access to health
care should not be discriminative, instead,
labor policies should be the same across all of
Zara's warehouse and factories, to ensure that
the rights of workers are being respected.
Because of this, we wish to create an
investment strategy to enhance our
employees' current status. This will also help
to improve relations between employees and
the company, resulting in more productive
and efficient work dynamics, as well as a
better work environment.
Justification for Proposal
All Inditex factories in China, India, and
Brazil are aware of an ethical code that must
be followed, which includes quality, conduct,
and sustainability standards. Although we
believe that maintaining total control of all
our production chains is difficult, we believe
that it is possible if we give it the necessary
importance. The best way to accomplish this
is to improve regulation and control over
large factories where clothes are
manufactured.
We want to start a pre-selection system for
Zara's suppliers. It will take more steps when
selecting subcontracting companies because
a careful selection will allow the company to
overcome the problem that employees are
facing. We will investigate all its distribution
lines, factories, and physical stores to ensure
that our employees are working under
regulated conditions.
As an international company, we have
worked for years to ensure that our products
are made with workers' rights in mind, and
we believe this is the right path to take.
Implementation
The system of pre-selection of our suppliers is the focus.
These are double-checked before and after working with
the group. If a company wants to work with Zara, it must
go through a pre-selection process and fill out a form
detailing how many employees it has, how many factories
it has, and where and how the production process is, from
when the clothes are sewn until they are taken to laundry
or ironing centers, for example. Then the auditors must
physically go to these areas to verify that this information
is correct.

At Zara, we want to increase labor representatives in each

of these areas, as well as specialized teams that monitor
the company's global operations. They are the textile
giant's eyes and ears in those areas, as well as those in
charge of communicating with unions to ensure that
working conditions are met.

One of the potential limitations is that 60% of Zara's

clothing, particularly the new designs, is manufactured in
nearby areas, in its own factories in Spain, Portugal, and
Morocco. However, there is another fashion, that of
basics, which is marketed in the most distant countries
and accounts for 40% of garments on the market. That is
why we must pay special attention to them, as they can be
more difficult to control and continue to account for a
significant portion of production.
Next Steps

•Conduct an audit for at least three days

with local employees at factories in all of
the manufacturing nations to overview
the situation.

•Choosing which geographic areas to

target based on the audit produced.
Those areas will obtain more personnel
to control the situation and will be under
review for three months. After this
period, a decision regarding the
continuance of the contract with the
manufacturer will take place.

•Investing in the contract of more

personnel to facilitate the control of
these facilities.
Conclusion

• After this pandemic, it would

be interesting to start
campaigns to stop this labor
exploitation. Zara has a good
opportunity to invest in
researching the working
conditions of their employees
and, in turn, provide annual
reports on this to
demonstrate that such
control has been done.

• Zara main focus is to provide

the better conditions to its
employees, and we are
planning to do so while
applying these new strategies