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.
Research conducted by Labour Rights Promotion Network (LPN) and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School (JHSPH) of Public Health Center for Refugee and Disaster Response, and supported by the United Nations Inter-Agency Project on Human Trafficking (UNIAP). ...Read More
The failure of governments to protect workers’ rights in the global economy has left a yawning gap of regulation and helped spawn an $80 billion industry in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and social auditing. Yet the experience of the last ...Read More
This ICAT issue paper argues that access to remedies for trafficking victims should be a core component of efforts to address human trafficking, and provides illustrative examples of effective remedies and limitations that currently exist in differe...Read More
For over a decade, the Netherlands has put its trading interests above its duty to protect against human rights abuse by companies operating under its jurisdiction. This report, based on Amnesty International research conducted between March and ...Read More
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