Social Responsibility

Gorton’s believes that all employees, as well as all employees of our supply chain partners, deserve to be treated in a respectful and dignified manner. To help achieve this we have established workplace and employment standards to assist all managers and suppliers in meeting our expectations as it relates to the treatment and working conditions of employees. Gorton’s strongly believes that all of our suppliers should follow the same philosophy regarding compliance with the law, upholding high standards of business conduct, and ethical treatment of employees.

All suppliers are required to review, sign and comply with the Gorton’s Workplace and Employment Standards Policy annually. This policy is a comprehensive document that addresses work place standards and ethical treatment of employees, and it states our intolerance of slavery and human trafficking. The major policies in the standard include:

• Provision of a safe and healthy workplace environment
• Reasonable working hours and fair compensation in compliance with local law
• No discriminatory practices or any type of child, prison, or forced labor practices

As part of Gorton’s continued improvement towards building and strengthening our supply chain, we are in the process of enhancing our supplier accountability standards and procedures for suppliers that fall short of meeting our company workplace and employment standards. We continue to work with a third party social responsibility consultant to help us identify potential program improvements and to help us conduct comprehensive assessments of suppliers and countries.

Currently, we rely on our suppliers to do their own social responsibility assessments to evaluate compliance with standards for human trafficking and slavery, and we request copies of any independent audits that are conducted annually.

Another component of our continuous improvement program is to provide better training and education to our suppliers and company employees on this subject. Gorton’s educates affected personnel through formal training programs and by continuous communication to our suppliers as to our expectations regarding workplace and employment standards.The happiness and well-being of all employees throughout our entire supply chain is important to Gorton’s. We believe that it is our responsibility to partner with suppliers that implement proper workplace and employment standards for all its employees. Gorton’s believes this is essential to our role as a trusted global corporate citizen.