Under the regime of private company or multi-stakeholder voluntary codes of conduct and industry social auditing, workers have absorbed low wages and unsafe and abusive conditions; labour leaders and union members have become the targets of both government and factory harassment and violence; and trade union power has waned. Nowhere have these private systems of codes and audits so clearly failed to protect workers as in Bangladesh’s apparel industry. However, international labour groups and Bangladeshi unions have succeeded in mounting a challenge to voluntarism in the global economy, persuading more than 180 companies to make a binding and enforceable commitment to workers’ safety in an agreement with 12 unions.
The extent to which this Bangladesh Accord will be able to influence the entrenched global regime of voluntary codes and weak trade unions remains an open question. But if the Accord can make progress in Bangladesh, it can help to inspire similar efforts in other countries and in other industries.
The unprecedented crisis that COVID-19 has suddenly unleashed upon the. world is affecting all aspects of society and is likely to have an effect on the routes and characteristics of both regular and irregular migration. Smuggling of migrants and tr...Read More
This briefing examines the impact of the Coronavirus pandemic on the risk of labour exploitation in low-paid and insecure employment in the UK. Drawing on interviews with workers and frontline services, it proposes emergency measures to ensure all w...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2017 through December 31, 2017 and is accurate as of July 11, 2018. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may be revealed to the National Hotline over time. Conseq...Read More
In October 2003, Congress passed a law allowing trafficking victims to recover civil damages from their traffickers in federal courts, 18 U.S.C. § 1595, now known as the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA). In the almost twent...Read More
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