IFBWW Recognises New Advancement Of Social Standards And Forest Certification In MTCC Scheme

The Geneva-based International Federation of Building and Wood Workers (IFBWW) in a press release on 6 January 2005 announced that the Malaysian Timber Certification Council's (MTCC) newly adopted requirements for chain-of-custody certification is the most far-reaching certification system for social standards of any of the existing forest certification systems.

UNLIKE ALL other certification systems where certification stops at the forests' edge, the MTCC system extends coverage through the entire chain-of-custody.

The newly adopted MTCC chain-of-custody requirements specify that:

local populations in the vicinity of the manufacturing facility should be given priority for employment
all Occupational Health and Safety regulations are met or exceeded, and
the rights of workers to organise and voluntary negotiations as set forth in ILO Conventions 87 and 98 are guaranteed.

According to Asian IFBWW Regional Representative, Mr. Balan Nair, "with the inclusion of these requirements, the MTCC standards can begin to fulfill the promise of forest certification and will give consumers what they are demanding i.e. 'conflict-free' forest products. No longer will consumers have to worry about whether or not wood from sustainably managed forests are manufactured by mills that deny workers decent or safe work if they see the MTCC label."

IFBWW Global Program Director, Mr. William Street added that, "when these requirements are put in place, MTCC will have made substantial progress in assisting the forest products industry in Malaysia obtain sustainable forest management, and taken an important step towards poverty reduction and social justice. Consumers will be able to look for the MTCC label on wood products throughout the world and recognise that it ensures that workers and their communities are protected throughout the entire manufacturing process. No other certification system has requirements that specifically address these social concerns along the entire chain of custody."

Prior to this change by MTCC, all forest certification systems, even though they labeled consumer products, did not extend social standards beyond the boundary line of the forest management unit. This meant that trees harvested from the most sustainable managed forests in the world could be processed in sawmills, plywood plants, or pulp mills that had unsafe working conditions, denied workers the ILO core labour standards, and provided local forest dependent peoples with little or no benefits. Yet, these products would still carry the label of the forest certification system. This misleads consumers into believing that the product meets the standards when in fact these standards are only applied to the first step in the manufacturing process, which is the management of the forest

The IFBWW organises 284 trade unions with over 10.5 million members in 128 countries.

For more information, please contact:
Mr. William Street, Director
Global Wood and Forestry Program
Geneva, Switzerland
++41 22 827 3777
www.ifbww.org
or email: wiIliam.street@ifbww.org