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 data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
Under the Short Guides on Modern Slavery Reporting, CORE has developed this short guide aimed at providing an overview of o selection of weak and notable reporting practice from statements published to date. A random sample of modern slavery statem...Read More
The discovery of the camps and graves at Wang Kelian, Perlis, garnered the attention of many and stunned the nation. These camps and graves on the border of Malaysia and Thailand gave rise to an outcry that resulted in the competency of the enforcem...Read More
A growing number of global brands and retailers are adopting ethical recruitment policies stipulating, among other things, that all costs and fees related to labour recruitment are paid by the employer and not by the workers being recruited. Employe...Read More
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