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.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), an estimated 21 million people are victims of forced labor around the world. As defined by the ILO, forced labor refers to “situations in which persons are coerced to work through the use o...Read More
The vast majority of modern slavery and human trafficking cases involve interaction with finance in some form. In many cases, traffickers exploit their victims financially, taking control of their bank accounts, confiscating wages, and using debt as...Read More
The shift of economic production from higher labour standard regimes in the global North to lower standard regimes in the South is undermining enforcement of global labour standards. Responding to criticisms from the ‘anti-sweatshop’ movement, c...Read More
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
2020 © Copyright, RESPECT International. All Rights Reserved. Website Disclaimer | Privacy Policy
