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
This study was carried out to identify and sequence the determinants impacting the Algerian government’s anti-trafficking efforts. As the only study so far to explore the issue of determinants in Algeria, the authors anticipate this report will im...Read More
This report provides an assessment of the UK-wide Modern Slavery Helpline’s operations in 2019 detailing the number, type and nature of calls, webforms and app submissions received between 1 January 2019 and 31 December 2019 and the number and dem...Read More
A new report, Real Care is Rare. An On-The-Ground Perspective on Blood Diamonds and the Fifth ‘C’, highlights the existence of modern day blood diamonds due to ongoing ties between diamonds and brutal human rights abuse (amongst other ...Read More
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