STR Responsible Sourcing (STR RS), a leading provider of ethical sourcing consulting services for Fortune 500 companies, today announced that it has launched the most comprehensive and up-to-date online reference tool for labor laws and employment standards. STR RS's new Labor & Employment Standards Library (LESLi) provides sourcing, legal, and human resources professionals and academics with full-text English translation of labor laws for over 140 countries. LESLi's contents are both searchable and exportable, and the product features a suite of analysis tools that allow users to make country-to-country comparisons of different labor laws, including wages, hours, hiring and termination, forced labor, and collective bargaining among others. Until now, it was cumbersome to gather actual full-text laws since different countries - not to mention the states and provinces within them - offer different access levels to their laws. There was also the hurdle of effectively translating these laws to English.

"With the increasing global reach of supply chains, the need for having a consistent single source for this information became obvious. We talked to many clients and industry partners about their challenges, and then spent two years making LESLi a reality," said Greg Gardner, General Manager of STR RS. "LESLi will make it infinitely easier for companies, researchers and others to obtain good quality English translations of labor laws that relate to their global businesses."

In addition to addressing the need for a one-stop shop for global labor laws, Gardner also cites two additional elements that make LESLi unique within the industry: (1) STR RS is a trusted name in the corporate responsibility industry so subscribers can feel assured that the information contained in the database is reputable and legitimate; and (2) subscribers can be confident that the laws in the database are up to date.

"This database was initially developed for our field staff so they could quickly reference the laws that were applicable to the assessments they were doing," explains Rachelle Jackson, Director of Research and Development at STR RS. "We can't do a good job of assessing workplace conditions without access to up-to-date labor laws so we do regular reviews of the laws in the database to make sure they are all current."

Some of the applications for LESLi include: setting global human resources policies that are consistent with local laws; identifying gaps between sourcing countries' labor conditions and international labor standards; understanding legal obligations for employing people in international locales; and comparing the labor requirements from country to country.

Visit http://www.STRQuality.com/LESLi for an online product demonstration and additional information about LESLi. Demonstrations of LESLi will also be available during STR RS's 5th Annual Responsible Sourcing Summit on February 25, 2010.

About STR Responsible Sourcing
STR Responsible Sourcing is a leading provider of corporate responsibility consulting services which include monitoring, training, research and program development. STR RS is a business unit within Specialized Technology Resources’ Quality Assurance Division, which was founded in 1944. STR RS has offices in over 30 countries across five continents, and the reach to provide audit services in over 140 countries around the world. Visit STR at http://www.STRQuality.com.

UL

UL

UL is a leading global provider of corporate responsibility auditing and ethical sourcing consulting services, which include monitoring, training, research, and program development. With offices in over 30 countries across five continents, UL Responsible Sourcing has the reach to provide audit services in over 140 countries around the world. UL is part of UL Verification Services, a business unit of UL (Underwriters Laboratories). Additional information about UL may be found at www.strquality.com

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