People in the McDonald’s Supply Chain
Like our own employees, our suppliers’ employees are critical to our success. While they are not our own employees, we strive to work with suppliers who share our values.
Specifically, our suppliers are expected to share our support of fundamental rights for all people - to treat their employees with fairness, respect and dignity and to follow practices that promote health and safety.
Working to build social accountability in the supply chain
The foundation of our program is our Supplier Code of Conduct, which lists McDonald's minimum requirements in the areas of employment, workplace practices and workplace health and safety. We also require our suppliers to extend the same expectations to their own suppliers.
To monitor adherence to the specific elements of our Code of Conduct – and just as importantly, to help suppliers identify opportunities for improvement - we partner with independent third-party experts to regularly track and assess their performance.
Through consultation with outside experts and internal process reviews, we look for ways to make our Social Accountability Program more effective. We want to make sure that suppliers are engaged, that our own staff are closely aligned and that resources are used where they are most needed in order to improve performance in an efficient manner. Some recent improvements include:
- Online training for suppliers, their facility managers, and McDonald's supply chain staff. Now anyone in these roles can log in to a website at their own convenience and learn more about our expectations, why they are important and ways to improve.
- Additional tools for suppliers and facility managers, such as an online self assessment and risk assessment that they can use to see very clearly how they are performing against our requirements.
In addition to requiring minimum standards from our suppliers, we are working with them to create more proactive and sustainable improvements in the workplace environment through initiatives such as Project Kaleidoscope.
Improving conditions for tomato farm workers
We expect employee safety and well-being to be a priority throughout our supply chain, and we support our supplier’s efforts in various ways. For example, in April 2007, McDonald's USA, its produce suppliers and the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) agreed to address wages and working conditions for farm workers who pick Florida tomatoes that are served in McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S.
McDonald's USA and our suppliers continue to support the initiative with CIW to pay an additional penny per pound for Florida tomatoes and to arrange for growers to pass the funds directly onto their workers. Despite resistance by the growers (which supply McDonald’s produce suppliers) to implement this payment policy, McDonald's produce suppliers continue to look for ways to achieve this important objective.
McDonald's produce suppliers have also been working directly with the CIW to finalize a strong code of conduct for Florida tomato growers. Additionally, discussions are moving forward between our produce suppliers and the CIW to develop a third-party verification system of the code of conduct which could be adopted by a broader group of purchasers.