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.
This Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report calls upon all governments to ensure they are addressing all forms of human trafficking and to reject the common misunderstanding that human trafficking requires movement across borders or even to another tow...Read More
GENERAL CONTEXT The construction industry relies on large numbers of low-skilled workers and, as such, is a major provider of formal employment opportunities around the world. In the Gulf States in particular, the construction boom has attracted ...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
Between November 2018 and January 2019, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre invited 35 canned tuna companies and supermarkets - representing 80 of the world’s largest retail canned tuna brands - to answer a survey on their approach to hu...Read More
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