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.
In 2022 Porticus launched a pilot learning year to support the development of a new global programme, Transforming migration parameters through movement building and lived-experience leadership’ (hereafter MOVE) within the People on the Move Portf...Read More
Around the world, something in the region of 40 million innocent men, women and even children have been forced into various forms of modern slavery. Many are here in the UK. Still more are abroad. All are victims of a vile business that has no place...Read More
Written by Hinrich Voss. The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed vulnerabilities and fragilities in global value chains. The worldwide economic lockdowns to contain COVID-19 have led in some industries to unilateral cancellations and suspensions of or...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
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