Corporations have increasingly turned to voluntary, multi-stakeholder governance programs to monitor workers’ rights and standards in global supply chains. This article argues that the emphasis of these programs varies significantly depending on stakeholder involvement and issue areas under examination. Corporate-influenced programs are more likely to emphasize detection of violations of minimal standards in the areas of wages, hours, and occupational safety and health because focusing on these issues provides corporations with legitimacy and reduces the risks of uncertainty created by activist campaigns. In contrast, these programs are less likely to emphasize workers’ rights to form democratic and independent unions, bargain, and strike because these rights are perceived as lessening managerial control without providing firms with significant reputational value. This argument is explored by coding 805 factory audits of the Fair Labor Association between 2002 and 2010, followed by case studies of Russell Athletic in Honduras, Apple in China, and worker rights monitoring in Vietnam.

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Four Monitoring Report – Monitoring and evaluation of laws and policies for action against human trafficking and their Implementation in the Republic of North Macedonia
Publications

This report is based on the Monitoring and Evaluation of Anti-trafficking Policies: A Handbook for Victims’ Advocates (hereafter: the Handbook) developed in 2016. The Handbook was designed with the idea to enable monitoring of national anti-traffi...Read More

TAGS: Europe
Food & Beverage Benchmark Findings Report
Publications

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

Ending child labour by 2025: A review of policies and programmes
Publications

The international community has declared that the persistence of child labour in today’s world is unacceptable and, in the Sustainable Development Goals, has renewed its commitment to eliminating all forms of child labour by 2025. This report aims...Read More

Catching the Virus Cybercrime, Disinformation and the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 resourcesPublications

Cybercriminals have been among the most adept at exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic for the various scams and attacks they carry out. With a record number of potential victims staying at home and using online services across the European Union (EU) du...Read More