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.
Written by Jordan Greenbaum, Hanni Stoklosa, and Laura Murphy. The global pandemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus exacerbates major risk factors for global human trafficking. Social isolation of families and severe economic dis...Read More
In the present report, the Working Group on the issue of human rights and transnational corporations and other business enterprises takes stock of business and government action to advance the implementation of corporate human rights due diligence as...Read More
Millions of people around the world who farm, fish, and process the food in our stores are working extremely long hours, toiling in unsafe conditions, and earning only poverty wages. The report and its accompanying methodology note launch Oxfam’...Read More
The data in this report represents signals and cases from January 1, 2018 through December 31, 2018 and is accurate as of July 25, 2019. Cases of trafficking may be ongoing or new information may revealed to the National Hotline over time. Consequen...Read More
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