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.
An article by Garrett Brown MPH, CIH Corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs began in the early 1990s with the promise of eliminating dangerous and illegal “sweatshops” in the global supply chains of world-renown corporations selling ...Read More
COVID-19 represents a large and sudden exogenous shock to the world. The pandemic itself and the measures being undertaken to slow its pace and effect have short, medium, and long-term impacts on the problem of modern slavery. We have formulated res...Read More
40.3 million people – around 1 in every 185 people alive – experienced modern slavery or forced labour in 2016. States have committed to take immediate and effective measures to end modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking by 2030, an...Read More
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