NEWTON, MA. - October 31, 2008 - Clear Voice, a confidential communication hotline for workers, has successfully completed its first year of operations in Latin America and China and is expanding to five additional Asian countries in partnership with Verité, a leading non-profit organization dedicated to protecting against sweatshop abuses.

"Low wage, semi-skilled factory workers did not have access to mobile phones five years ago; today they do." explained president and long-time corporate responsibility practitioner, Doug Cahn. "Clear Voice harnesses technology to protect workers against abuses."

In addition to hotline services, Clear Voice provides factory managers with training on management systems to establish grievance mechanisms that address worker concerns. Together, these two services have provided factories with more information about issues their workers are facing, and the ability and skills to respond to those issues in a meaningful and impactful way.

Clear Voice comes at a time when factory workplace assessments have more limited value as a result of the proliferation of falsified records and, in some cases, the poor quality of audits. Workers have become a largely untapped source of information for brands and retailers with workplace compliance programs.

"In order to be successful, we must have the trust of workers. We do this by having highly trained professionals meet with workers in factories to explain the service to them in their own language so they can provide us with feedback on their own terms," said Cahn.

Confidential information reported by workers is communicated to senior factory managers. Steps taken by factories to resolve issues are communicated back to workers. Brands and retailers can use Clear Voice data to check the progress that factories are making to address workplace issues.

Factories that subscribe to Clear Voice receive credible and timely information about factory issues, improved communications with their workforce, lower costs due to worker turnover or unrest, and access to best practices for managing grievances through training. Factories pay an annual subscription fee equivalent to the costs of 1 "“ 2 monitoring site visits.

In order to expand the number of countries in which its services are offered, Clear Voice has partnered with Verite, a leading non-profit organization committed to ensuring that people worldwide work under safe, fair and legal conditions. "This is the first initiative of its kind to combine credible hotline services for workers with training for factory managers," explained Dan Viederman, Executive Director of Verité (see: www.verite.org). "These two program elements help build factories’ capacity to take ownership of ensuring decent workplace conditions in a sustainable way." The partnership is pleased to offer Clear Voice services in the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, South Korea and Taiwan.

In its first year, Clear Voice has received grievances expressing a broad range of concerns ranging from underpayment of workers to sexual harassment.

For more information see: www.clearvoicehotline.net or contact info@clearvoicehotline.net.

Clear Voice

Clear Voice

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