A code should guarantee certain minimum conditions for children and adolescents under 18 years of age who are employed. It should ensure that children under 18 years of age are not involved in hazardous work, that is to say in work which would expose them to physical or other sorts of harm on account of the job they are doing. It should stipulate some maximum hours for children to work during the day and week, as extremely long hours of work can constitute a hazard for young people. It should also guarantee that children have periodic holidays. A code should explicitly ban the use of any form of corporal punishment for child workers.
Companies have to check whether their code is being respected.
After reviewing how company codes of conduct work, the report goes on to look at the experience of labels attached to certain products which have guarantees about the conditions in which the product was made. In contrast to the codes of conduct, which tend to have been adopted by individual companies, labels have tended to set an industry-wide standard. Furthermore, instead of being developed exclusively by companies importing into industrialised countries, some labelling schemes have been established in developing countries at the initiative of local activists who want to give a guarantee about the conditions in which a product is made, which is backed up by a credible monitoring system. Finally, the report reviews what steps companies and organisations based in industrialised countries can take to ensure that their employees working in developing countries do not become involved in the commercial exploitation of children, either at home or at work. The conclusion of this report is that businesses involved in international trade have a great deal to do in order to improve employment standards, particularly as far as children are concerned.