Launched in 2019, the “Agreements to Prevent and Combat Gender-Based Violence and Harassment in Lesotho” are making great progress towards their goals of addressing sexual harassment and gender-based violence in the Lesotho-based suppliers of several major apparel brands.
This historic binding agreement has been a tremendous accomplishment for Lesotho garment workers, who, though their unions, are ending the pervasive abuses in garment factories The program’s success to date also shows the adaptability and scalability of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model, which continues to prove just how effective it is at protecting workers’ fundamental human rights in global supply chains spanning three continents and multiple industries.
Lesotho Agreement: Worker-driven Social Responsibility Pairs Training, Standards & Enforcement Combatting Gender-Based Violence
Union and NGO leaders from Lesotho learn about the Fair Food Program in Immokalee, Florida. November 2018. Photo credit: WRC
The Lesotho agreement covers five factories and benefits more than 10,000 apparel workers, the vast majority of whom are women. The agreement establishes that:
- Any worker who experiences harassment or coercion has the right to file a complaint with the independent monitoring body Workers’ Rights Watch, which will investigate the complaint and impose remedies. Such remedies can include requiring the employer to terminate the abuser – an action that would have been practically unheard of in the global apparel industry prior to this agreement;
- Robust anti-retaliation provisions to ensure that complainants and witnesses are protected;
- An in-depth training program for workers about their rights under the program. Workers are compensated by their employer for the time they spend in these trainings;
- Strong protections against any interference with, or retaliation against, workers’ exercise of their associational rights; and
- Many other provisions as outlined in the announcement here.
Unlike the voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSRs) programs and multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs) that are often used to deflect public scrutiny of abuses, this binding agreement includes strong enforcement mechanisms to ensure that the employer and the buyers comply with their commitments. In the case of the brands, they can be subject to legal action for violating the program’s terms. In the case of the employer, Nien Hsing faces a potential loss of business if it fails to uphold the agreement. As demonstrated in other WSR programs, such consequences are critical to ensuring that workplace improvements are implemented and maintained over time.
“Our situation changed a lot. We can now report incidences of [gender-based violence and harrassment]. … I speak openly to workers about how the [Workers Rights Watch] assisted me in my case and how grateful I am for them.” —A Nien Hsing worker
First Progress Report Highlights “A Fundamental Transformation” for Workers
The first progress report on program implementation notes that “most workers expressed a basic level of trust in the complaint mechanism and a willingness to report abuse through that mechanism—a fundamental transformation from the previous attitudes to reporting Gender-Based Violence and Harassment.”
Program Development Highlights Scalability, Adaptability of WSR Model
This program was developed in the face of overwhelming odds, as workers at the Nien Hsing Textile Co. in Lesotho came together to demand respect and justice in the workplace, and an end to a pervasive environment of gender-based violence. The agreement would not have come about without years of courageous organizing by the three unions representing garment workers at the supplier, Nien Hsing Textile: the Independent Democratic Union of Lesotho (IDUL), the United Textile Employees (UNITE), and the National Clothing Textile and Allied Workers Union (NACTWU). Equally important in achieving these agreements were the Federation of Women Lawyers in Lesotho (FIDA) and Women and Law in Southern African Research and Education Trust-Lesotho (WLSA), two of Lesotho’s leading women’s rights advocates. WLSA and FIDA joined with the three unions to battle workplace harassment and abuse at the factories.
The unions helped the Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) document and expose the reality in the factories, through an intensive investigation. The WRC recommended that the unions and women’s groups join forces to pursue a WSR agreement with the factory’s three main buyers and then pressed the buyers, Levi’s, The Children’s Place, and Kontoor Brands, to come to the table.
WRC, the Solidarity Center, and Workers United then worked side-by-side with the Lesotho union and women’s rights leaders to negotiate with the brands and Nien Hsing. Throughout, FIDA’s and WLSA’s insights were indispensable in the design of the anti-sexual harassment program the new agreements will create.
The complaint mechanism outlined in the agreement and implemented by Workers’ Rights Watch was modeled after the one in the Coalition of Immokalee Workers’ (CIW) Fair Food Program, an initiative that has been uniquely successful in addressing a culture of sexual harassment and gender-based violence that had persisted for years in the US agricultural industry. The program also draws from the experience of the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry which has transformed safety conditions and dramatically reduced workplace hazards for more than two million garment workers in Bangladesh and is now expanding to Pakistan.
The Fair Food Standards Council (FFSC) and CIW shared expertise and protocols, and provided strategic advice and support during the process, which included a two-day exchange in Immokalee, Florida between representatives from the organizations in Lesotho, CIW, FFSC, WRC, Solidarity Center, and WSR Network.
The development of the Lesotho Agreement underscores the adaptability of the WSR model and the infrastructure and support that exist for its expansion. It is more clear than ever that the biggest obstacle that exists for expansion of the model is brands’ unwillingness to sign binding agreements and commit to meaningful action, not a failure of the WSR model.
This is the second example of a WSR program in the global apparel industry, following the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh, which the WRC and two other Network members, Clean Clothes Campaign and the International Labor Rights Forum, helped to create and implement. The Solidarity Center is taking the lead in supporting the Lesotho organizations on program implementation with support from the WRC. FFSC is providing advice and consultation, particularly on implementation of the agreement’s complaint mechanism.
Fact Sheet: Gender Justice in Lesotho