What is Worker-driven Social Responsibility?
Worker-driven Social Responsibility represents a new paradigm for protecting human rights in global supply chains, one designed, monitored, and enforced by the workers it is intended to protect. This is coupled with legally-binding agreements with retail buyers that provide financial support for suppliers to bring them into compliance with worker-defined labor standards, and that create enforceable market consequences when suppliers fail to comply. Together, these elements have proven uniquely successful in eliminating and preventing human rights abuses of marginalized, low-wage workers in corporate supply chains. Learn more.
In 2015, worker organizations, allies, and technical advisors came together to create the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network for the purpose of expanding, promoting, and replicating the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model in supply chains around the world. The model has since been successfully replicated across commodities, sectors, and sourcing countries.
The Business Case: Why Investors Should Care About Worker-driven Social Responsibility
Beyond the devastating human costs, human rights abuses in supply chains create financial risks to investors. Increasingly, investors are being called on to take stronger action on Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues. The UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment has embarked on a multi-year project to encourage investors to implement the UN Guiding Principles, the OECD has issued guidelines for responsible business conduct by investors, and in the U.S., the SEC has established an ESG task force. The COVID-19 pandemic has enhanced the visibility and urgency of supply chain issues, and increased attention on the role investors can play in advancing solutions.
Yet despite decades of voluntary Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs and social or environmental certifications produced by multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs), severe human rights violations, including forced labor, which is prohibited by law across the world, persist in many industries. The failures of traditional social certifications and auditing are numerous and well-documented. Recent examples include findings of widespread forced labor on tea plantations certified as ethical and the prevalence of child labor in the production of “certified” cocoa. The Rana Plaza building in Bangladesh that collapsed in 2013, killing over 1,100 workers, had been inspected and certified as “safe” by a widely adopted social certification program. In the U.S., two farms on which workers were subjected to forced labor had been certified “socially accountable” by an industry-controlled MSI. Such failures have prompted calls for new models to address abuses in global supply chains.
Worker-driven Social Responsibility programs have shown measurable and timely improvements for workers. For example, the Fair Food Program has led to a swift resolution of complaints, a significant decrease in sexual assault (and termination of offenders), and wage increases for workers. The program has been described as “the best workplace-monitoring program” in the U.S. in The New York Times, and in 2015, the CIW received a Presidential Medal for the program’s effectiveness in combatting human trafficking. In the global garment industry, the Bangladesh Accord on Fire and Building Safety has similarly used a binding agreement between workers and corporations to transform safety across the country’s industry, leading to the repair of over 125,000 safety hazards across 1,600 factories, including replacing faulty electrical wiring and installing safe fire exits. The program also has a complaint mechanism that allows workers to confidentially file complaints about unsafe working conditions. The Accord has made more than two million workers in Bangladesh vastly safer.
The WSR model has transformed entire industries in part through the power of corporations committing to supporting supplier compliance with codes of conduct, and enforcing market consequences for violations. Investors have a role to play in those transformations, by encouraging companies to embrace WSR programs in their industries.
Contact
If you have further questions or would like to invite a member of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network to speak at your event or conference, please contact Sarah Newell at sarah@wsr-network.org.