Intertek assists in founding the Association for Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA)

10 Nov 2015

Lowell, MA - Intertek, a leading quality solutions provider to industries worldwide joined the efforts of the global auditing community in the creation of the Association for Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) last month to help bring more credibility to auditors addressing working conditions around the world.

The Association for Professional Social Compliance Auditors (APSCA) was created to ensure professionalism, consistency and credibility of individual auditors and organizations performing independent social compliance audits, and to promote the use of independent social compliance audits, as a tool to advance workplace conditions for workers, globally. The APSCA certification process will ensure auditors have consistent training, education, background checks, and demonstrate competencies that are standard requirements in comparable professional auditor associations.

Social compliance audits, often conducted by third party auditing firms, are one of the tools used by multinational organizations to assess compliance of supply chain facilities’ and farms’ against local and international expectations of labour conditions. A result of a year’s effort on the part of leading social compliance auditing firms, including Intertek, Arche Advisors, Bureau Veritas, RINA, SGS, TUV Rheinland, TUV Sud, and UL, APSCA has been created to meet industry needs as supply chains become increasingly global and while hundreds of thousands of social compliance audit reports are already in circulation.

“Today, working conditions around the world are increasingly scrutinized by consumers and media, and as a result, multinational organizations expect more transparency from their suppliers. However, social compliance audits performed to-date has been inconsistent.” said Roger Brockway of the International Federation of Inspection Agencies (IFIA), a major sponsor of APSCA.

“As challenges for workers around the world continue to evolve alongside organisations’ needs to improve their’ Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) it is more important than ever to bring consistency to the social compliance auditing industry. Companies and workers throughout the world rely on the insight provided by social compliance audits and APSCA endeavours to provide a leading level of assurance.”

Applicants are invited to register for APSCA certification from January 1st, 2016. Primarily focusing on members from the social compliance auditing industry, APSCA will later include other types of auditors such as internal auditor staff from brand or retailer organizations. Additionally, as the association expands, APSCA is actively seeking an Executive Director to lead this initiative, and is also currently forming an executive and stakeholder board to be fully functional in the coming weeks.

For more information on how you can participate, contact apsca@ifia-federation.org.

Contacts
For further information, please contact

For Inquiries:
Catherine Beare
EMEA Regional Manager, Supplier Management
Phone: +44 (0) 20 7239 4933
Email: catherine.beare@intertek.com  

For Market Inquiries:
Lauren Whittemore
Global Marketing Manager, Business Assurance
Phone: +1 978.614.0602
Email: lauren.whittemore@intertek.com
 
About Intertek
Intertek is a leading quality solutions provider to industries worldwide.  From auditing and inspection, to testing, training, advisory, quality assurance and certification, Intertek adds value for its customers by helping improve the quality and safety of their products, assets and processes.  With a network of more than 1,000 laboratories and offices and over 38,000 people in more than 100 countries, Intertek supports companies’ success in the global marketplace, by helping customers to meet end users’ expectations for safety, sustainability, performance, integrity and desirability in virtually any market worldwide.  Visit www.intertek.com