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Originaltext GILDAN, zur Zeit nur in English verfügbar.

The Company, Overview
The Company manufactures premium quality basic T-shirts, sport shirts and sweatshirts for sale in the wholesale imprinted sportswear market of the U.S., Canadian, European and other international markets. The Company sells its products as blanks, which are ultimately decorated by screenprinters with designs and logos for sale to consumers. Gildan has announced plans to sell its products into the mass-market retail channel, in addition to the screenprint market. In conjunction with this strategy, Gildan is expanding its product-line to include underwear and athletic socks (USA).

Gildan's corporate head office is located in Montreal, Canada, and we have over 11,000 full-time employees around the world. Our shares are listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange.

Corporate Citizenship
Becoming recognized as an industry leader in corporate social responsibility and corporate citizenship is a long-term process of earning, and continuously re-earning, trust and credibility.

I am pleased with the progress we have made at Gildan during 2005. This section of the website presents a detailed review of the Company’s Corporate Citizenship program under four readings – Labour Practices, Community Relations, Environmental Sustainability and Working with Stakeholders.

The developments that I would highlight as being most worthy of note during 2005 are the following:
A positive and dramatic change from prior years is our new spirit of collaboration with NGO’s. We worked in conjunction with the Maquila Solidarity Network and the Worker Rights Consortium to develop a program for the re-integration into other Gildan factories of workers displaced by the shutdown of our El Progreso plant. Our compliance with this program is currently being independently audited by EMIH, a local Honduran NGO. We have maintained an ongoing constructive dialogue with NGO’s on a wide range of issues and quickly found mutually satisfactory resolutions to other issues that have arisen at Gildan plants or at our outside contractors.

One of the main reasons we were previously resistant when issues and concerns were raised by NGO’s is that we were proud of our modern factories and had established a strict written internal code of conduct for labour practices within the Company. We have come to appreciate the benefit of building a strong internal corporate social responsibility compliance function to conduct training and auditing within our manufacturing operations. This will enable us to take responsibility internally within Gildan to ensure that our code, as well as the other external codes to which we subscribe, are understood by all of our management and workers, and that instances of non-compliance are identified and corrected. We have therefore engaged Verité, a globally respected training and auditing organization, to carry out a comprehensive program of training and auditing at all of our Company-owned and contractor facilities, and to advise us on the structuring of our internal compliance function. By the end of fiscal 2006, we are committed to have established this function within the Company, under strong and credible internal leadership.

For those of our shareholders and other stakeholders who may not be familiar with Dans la rue, this is a widely respected, Montreal-based, non-profit organization founded in 1988 by Father Emmett Johns, or “Pops”, as he is
reverentially known within the Montreal community. The mission of Dans la rue is to help and re-orient homeless young people living on the streets of Montreal. We are extremely proud to have been accepted by Dans la rue as its major corporate sponsor. In fiscal 2005, we supported the organization with not only a significant financial contribution but also with the time and personal efforts of our Gildan employees.

August 2005 saw the admission of the initial group of students into the IPC, the first technical institute in Central America created to train personnel for the textile and apparel industries. Gildan was the initiator and also the lead corporate sponsor of the IPC, with a donation of U.S. $500,000. We have also committed to fund a scholarship program, which will provide for 50 scholarships annually, requiring further ongoing support in the range of U.S. $300,000 by Gildan over the next five years. We are gratified to have played such an important role in the foundation and development of the IPC, as we believe it will make an important contribution to the continuing economic development of Honduras, a country in which Gildan is a major employer and a leading business investor.

Overall, I believe that fiscal 2005 was the year in which Gildan began to achieve credibility not only as a company which is successful in economic terms, but also as one which is emerging as a leader in corporate social responsibility, corporate citizenship and corporate governance. There is a financial cost associated with a true commitment to corporate social responsibility, including investment in modern, bright, air-conditioned factories and state-of-the-art water treatment facilities, providing attractive wages and benefit programs, the cost of training and auditing consultants such as Verité, and support and donations for local communities and for economic development in host countries. However, I have no doubt that making these investments and incurring these costs will in the long-term contribute to the enhancement of shareholder value, as well as further the development of Gildan as a company of which our employees and all of our stakeholders can justifiably be proud.

Glenn J. Chamandy
President and Chief Executive Officer
Gildan Activewear Inc.


Der Corporate Citizenship Report 2005 von GILDAN als PDF zum download.