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 ILO’s Flagship International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour and Forced Labour (IPEC+) has ongoing operations in 62 countries, all of which are affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The programme has developed business continuity pla...Read More
The 2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark assesses 101 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world on a set of human rights indicators. The companies from 3 industries - Agricultural Products, Apparel, and Extractives - were chosen for the ...Read More
The new coronavirus (COVID-19) affects almost every area of people’s lives and economic activity and has led to a significant disruption of world trade. The current situation demonstrates how precarious our global systems of production and consump...Read More
The report identifies numerous potential liabilities for palm oil buyers and investors to consider when making investments in this sector to avoid facilitation and profit generation from labour abuses and failure to take action to address these issue...Read More
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