Consumer advocate groups can still readily find problems that auditors have missed. Two recent examples:

• In June 2005, NBC's Dateline program took hidden cameras into a Sara Lee supplier factory in Bangladesh also supplying Wal-Mart and found code serious violations monitors had missed.
• In August 2005, National Labor Committee and Hong Kong-based Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior reported on alleged poor working conditions in several factories making goods for Walt Disney Co.

The activist group Clean Clothes Campaign issued a report in November 2005 alleging that social audits as currently carried out often fail to deliver as a tool for checking working conditions in facilities producing garments and sports shoes. Researchers, drawing upon the input of 670 workers from 40 factories, found that social auditing falls short especially in relation to detecting violations of freedom of association.

Workers are more likely to be candid about actual working conditions with local religious or human rights organizations they trust rather than commercial auditing agencies employed by management. An independent voice can serve as a credible source of information on company supplier practices. Gap, Liz Claiborne and a few other companies have initiated successful experiments using such independent monitors at a few of their supplier plants. It would be ideal if independent monitoring practices could be incorporated into all supplier factory audits but this is not practical in the near future. A more realistic goal is to work with companies to integrate elements of independent monitoring into commercial auditing.

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