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.
La République centrafricaine (RCA), un pays enclavé d’Afrique, a connu depuis des décennies de grandes instabilités politiques. Les inégalités entre les régions et les différentes ethnies ont déclenché des griefs populaires qui, par la s...Read More
The decreasing cost of Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) and increasing mainstreaming of new technologies have resulted in wider application of digital tools to address global problems such as human trafficking and forced labour. Th...Read More
Across Europe, people live and work while having irregular migration status, economically, socially and culturally enriching their communities and countries of residence. Undocumented migrants contribute directly and indirectly to social protection ...Read More
2020 was a year unlike any other. This report documents what happened to garment workers across Asia – in Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, Cambodia and Bangladesh, putting numbers to the 25 per cent or so wage losses suffered by these worker...Read More
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