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.
The 2018 Corporate Human Rights Benchmark assesses 101 of the largest publicly traded companies in the world on a set of human rights indicators. The companies from 3 industries - Agricultural Products, Apparel, and Extractives - were chosen for the ...Read More
The risks to migrant workers using informal and unregulated labour migration channels are well documented: forced labour, including labour trafficking; debt bondage primarily due to high recruitment fees; child labour; excessive work hours; underpay...Read More
A TITP trainee on a construction site was asked to be a scaffolder without safety training, suffered serious injury and was forced to continue working through his recovery. A trainee at a waste recycling plant was assigned work using dangerous equipm...Read More
Human Rights Watch defends the rights of people worldwide. We scrupulously investigate abuses, expose facts widely, and pressure those with power to respect rights and secure justice. Human Rights Watch is an independent, international or...Read More
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