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 Royal Thai Government’s Social Security Office (SSO) has closely coordinated with employers throughout Thailand to survey and register sites and workers for COVID-19 vaccines. There are plans to offer AstraZeneca or Sinovac vaccines to migrant...Read More
In recent years, it has become increasingly apparent that there is a gap in the global understanding of how child sexual exploitation affects boys. While data on the prevalence of all child sexual exploitation is generally lacking, when data does ex...Read More
Expo 2020 Dubai could not have taken place without migrant workers who make up more than 90% of private sector employees in the UAE. With more than 40,000 workers employed in the construction process alone. Similarly, the delivery of the Expo requir...Read More
Summary Every year, tens of thousands of migrant workers from Kyrgyzstan travel to the central asian economic powerhouse of Kazakhstan in search of employment. thousands of these migrant workers, often together with their children, find work in t...Read More
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