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.
Edited by Joel Quirk and Julia O’Connell Davidson. This is the first volume of the series Beyond Trafficking and Slavery Short Course. Much of what people think they know about human trafficking and ‘modern-day slavery’ is inaccurate, ...Read More
The publication takes stock of technology tools and initiatives developed to combat trafficking in human beings in its different forms in the OSCE area and beyond. It also examines the ways technology can be misused to facilitate trafficking in huma...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
The ‘Protecting Rohingya Refugees in Asia’ project brings together the Danish Refugee Council, the Asia Displacement Solutions Platform, the Mixed Migration Centre, Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Indonesia, HOST International, and the Geutanyoë F...Read More
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