What is the Role of Trade Unions in Human Rights Due Diligence

April 29, 2023

ACV-CSCIASIA.ORG, JAKARTA – Some time ago, ACV-CSC International held a virtual seminar entitled “How can trade unions be involved in human rights due diligence?”. In the agenda, the results of academic research on the subject were also presented. Dr. Huib Huyse illustrates this by using 7 striking examples both up and down the supply chain. In addition, trade union colleagues from Myanmar, Ivory Coast and ITUC provided testimony on how actively they are involved in the HRDD agenda.

Marc Leemans, President of the Belgian Trade Union ACV-CSC said, it is very important for trade unions to work together, ensuring respect for human rights (HAM), workers’ rights, and protection of the environment can be guaranteed in international supply chains

Paapa Danquah, Director of the ITUC Legal Unit said, global supply chains represent about 60% of global trade, so this is about 20 trillion dollars of trade value. And the ILO shows that more than one-fifth of the global workforce is in global supply chains. However, key aspects of value and supply chain are hidden. They operate in a high level of informal sector, involving precarious work with low wages, inhuman working hours and a lack of respect for basic rights at work.
Human rights are imperative therefore, it is critical to address the many gaps in worker protection, in global values and supply chains, and hold companies accountable for impacts on human rights and workers in all their areas of operation, relationships and areas where they have influence and impact.

Dr. Huib Huyse, Professor @HIVA-KU Leuven University presented how trade unions are involved in human rights due diligence?, there are 7 examples of academic research presentations. at least one or two key actors in the supply chain are ready to collaborate with workers’ organizations. then there are some examples, we describe as an inhospitable environment.” Hub said.

1. Global Framework Agreement.
Global framework agreements have been an important instrument for many years, with most multinational companies making agreements with global trade union federations as standard, these agreements cover the core ILO labor conventions and other areas of core concern of this mechanism are to monitor collective agreements and have joint procurement where trade unions play an important role, then suppliers get involved and human rights due diligence is also introduced in global framework agreements.

2. Mandatory Legislation
This second point is quite well known, because it has been pioneered for many years, regarding the regulation of mineral conflicts in the European Union under the auspices of mandatory legislation, in this case, this law emphasizes the importance of conflict minerals of different types. This is one of the first European legislative initiatives to explicitly refer to the due diligence process and the need for companies to follow it.

3. Worker-focused social responsibility agreements.
This is one of those work-driven solutions, they have a number of features that set them apart from a lot of other solutions, so first, in this case we’re looking at the garment sector in Lesotho. It’s an agreement between the union and a number of women’s groups, and different actors along the supply chain, so brands and suppliers, if companies, suppliers don’t comply there will be a risk of losing access to those they used to work with.

4. Multi-functional shareholder initiative
This is described as an IRBC agreement, which is a Multi-stakeholder initiative, especially in the Netherlands, there are quite a few in different sectors. Again, this is an agreement between a group of companies in an effort to have as many companies as possible in the two countries, together with civil society actors, trade unions and NGOs. By nature, participation in these agreements is voluntary, but once a company participates there are fairly strict rules, and you can argue in a number of ways what the terms of the agreement need to comply with.

5. Human rights impact assessment.
So this could be an interesting instrument for mapping out the problem and then starting a dialogue.

6. Mandatory Legislation
There is a group of unions, 11 unions from seven countries that come together and start, the global family of unions XPO and focus on important cases with giant companies and they document and communicate about violations, raise the public profile of companies and importantly serve official notifications under French law .

7. National Contact Points
Where violations of the OECD guidelines for MNEs (Multinational Enterprises) can be overcome. The NCP (National Point of Contact) is dispute resolution, and in most cases has no enforcement power.

How to prevent the HRDD process from remaining purely non-business?,” the key is ensuring that the role of trade unions is institutionalized in this process. And the challenge is that all of this requires concerted action across the entire supply chain, not just one level or one union, but the entire supply chain.” Hub explained.

Meanwhile, Khaing Zar Aung, President of the Myanmar Industrial Workers’ Federation said the global framework agreement is good, I ask, what is our strategic plan? to implement the global framework agreement?, at the national level we cannot achieve the goals of the global framework agreement or GFA, the role of national trade unions is very important to achieve the goals of the GFA. “we have to continue to work and implement the GFA. organizing more members to get information in the field for engagement at the company level and take collective action as needed, democracy, the right to freedom of association and the right to freedom of expression is very important, it is the key to implement the agreement level global.

David Bli Ble, Secretary General of the CISL-Dignite Workers’ Union from Ivory Coast said that CISL’s involvement in the due diligence task can be said that our union is really involved, for us defending human rights and human rights, such as health, safety and the environment are not negotiable. Since 2017, Ivory Coast has implemented three points for declarations on multinational companies, one for the government, one for employers and one for workers, we want to promote this declaration which does not only take into account the declarations on multinational companies. but also global framework agreements. (RED/HTS)

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