Promoting and protecting decent working conditions is one the main campaigns for the ILO and various other Commissions and Councils; Decent work is the concept that workers receive equality with trade union freedom and equal opportunity in the workplace between men and women alike (Ilo.org, n.d.). The decent work agenda within the garment industry is an extremely important subject due to current or past mistreatment of workers, different sectors of governance are attempting to combat the social injustice found in many workplaces. Decent work concept plays a pivotal role in achieving sustainable development but also in achieving MDG’s set in 2000 (Decent Work?, n.d.).
One of the more recent acts to protect and promote the Decent work agenda, is the new Californian transparency within supply chains act that went into effect in 2012. This helps towards eradication of forced labour and human trafficking within the larger businesses in California, which impacts around 3200 companies (Dol.gov, n.d.). Forced labour is one of the most prominent crimes of social injustice with 21 million people victimized by it; many being women and children (Ilo.org, 2012). With forced labour being so prevalent within the garment industry this transparency act is a big step towards decent working conditions, features of the act include audits of suppliers and many more preventive steps to ensure that the supply chain doesn’t involve any forced labour or human trafficking. The infamously ethical brand Patagonia is one of the prime examples of going the extra mile in accordance with this new legislative act; Patagonia had created a correct code of conduct in the 90’s but began to develop further after 2010. Patagonia lists on its site on how it meets each agenda within the new transparency act including; four-fold audit process of factories by their social and environmental team (Patagonia, n.d.). Most human trafficking and slave labour occurs when a factory is using a third party labour broker, therefore Patagonia audits their suppliers, garment factories, subcontractors and since the Californian supply chain enactment they have also been auditing their raw material supplier; as to ensure that everyone follows their code of conduct. Along with the spoken-on measures, they have also hired three CSR field managers in Asia, are subject to random audits, hold training sessions on human trafficking and are expanding into awareness sessions for their suppliers (Patagonia, n.d.); along with many more procedures in place to ensure decent work for their employees. Patagonia is renowned for its transparent procedures and for its conduct as seen through some of the before stated examples; the company is a clear promoter and protector of the decent working conditions agenda along with being one of the founders of the FLA. Patagonia are strong believers along with many others that worldwide decent working conditions can create sustainable development and economic growth, especially for developing countries.
Social Governance and Consumerism puts pressure onto companies to fulfil decent working conditions in an informal way. When workers are being exploited in global chains it leads to huge uproar and heavy criticism from the public; leading to changes within the company targeted. The main example and one of the first multinational corporations to come under fire was Nike, for their mistreatment of workers in their supply chain which supplied materials for the manufacture of Nike products. Nike outsourced its manufacturing making the company more profitable, however this is where all the problems arose (Lutz, 2015). Public backlash and boycotts proceeded and finally, after 10 years when the public began to stop purchasing their products outright which were still being made by mistreated workers hands, Nike finally began to change their brand. They underwent serious changes including raising the minimum wage, minimum age and 60 hour weeks within their new non-profit ‘The fair Labor Association’ in which they encouraged other companies to join (Nissan, 2013). This is an example of Private governance and how large MNC’s set their own codes of conduct in accordance to the law; usually resulting in better brand imagining and higher sales. This abuse within the global supply chain was conquered by social governance and people banding together to prevail; with such a large company turning to decent working conditions and creating an organization for others to do the same, it resonated through the business world as a wakeup call for those in the garment industry that were still mistreating employees and promoted decent work within supply chains massively. The use of campaign and protest groups was and still is one of the most effective ways to promote and protect decent work; without the public purchasing goods from exploitative companies the business will have to change its ways to survive. Other forms of governance that help protect and promote the decent work agenda are Public and Global.
Public National governance is the main reason that decent working conditions are available and again the main reason why conditions do not fall below conduct code. Without the laws implemented, conditions would never have changed unless a company chose to change its own private conduct and value to its employees. Expanding global supply chains have to follow local laws and also continue with their contractual agreement which often leads to tension (ILO, 2016). The modern slavery act includes preventative processes, protection and adequate penalties (Legislation.gov.uk, 2015); this stops thousands of businesses using trafficked workers in the garment industry for their profitable gain. To conquer those than still don’t follow these laws different steps are being taken such as the new joint British government task force to protect working conditions; £5 million is being put towards anti trafficking efforts specifically for Nigeria by the UK, transparency in supply chains is one of the main agendas on the list after Theresa May met with the UN (Gov.uk, 2016). Transparency is key to the understanding of activities within a company’s global supply chain and the requirement of reporting when it is needed, this is a big factor by the EU towards protecting and promoting decent work, along with the asking of non-financial information from companies (European Union External Action, 2016). The use of Public National governance in terms of transparency within supply chains to protect and promote; works mainly because of the preventative steps in place but also because of the penalties faced when labour laws are not followed.
Decent Working conditions is a very hard thing to establish within the global supply chain; one of the main factors being is that there are many different factories that go into manufacturing a company’s goods, along with imports of migrant workers who may be trafficking victims and subcontractors to factories that can go un-audited. The ILO has adapted the concept of the decent working conditions to help some 1.4 billion workers that are mistreated (UN, 2017). As it is so hard to reach all these mistreated and abused workers within the garment industries supply chains, the ILO enforce at the minimum that no child labour should be involved; the global goal and an MDG is to eradicate child labour by 2025 on a whole scale including the garment industry (The Global Goals, n.d.). The idea of decent work is also tricky especially in places such as Bangladesh as seemingly factory owners have free reign; a recent protest to raise the insufficient minimum wage has resulted in the firing of nearly 3000 workers in the garment industry (Clean Clothes Campaign, 2017). Along with this decent working conditions in places such as these, it is hard to promote decent work considering that any sign of protests the law enforcement will imprison union leaders; one the most notorious labor rights activists was found murdered after the protests on garment workers’ wages (Laborrights.org, 2012). The fight for decent work within Bangladesh is even stronger now after the collapse of a factory in 2013 which killed over 1000 people; however, nothing yet has been done to enforce labour law, by either the government or Western retailers, as the Bangladeshi garment industry is one of the biggest and most profitable in the world. To protect workers’ rights and move onto decent working conditions, unions need to be set up and under supervision so that employees can push against the demands of an abusive employer. This will take time and combined efforts from the government and retailers; starting with audits and disciplinary actions if labour law is not followed, along with western companies showing a full list of their factories to the public in Bangladesh like Nike did so to gain transparency within their supply chains.
In specific circumstances when factories within the supply chain start to follow codes of conduct to create decent work, it could in fact damage employees further instead of helping them. Companies cutting working hours in a week looks good for a brand pre-face however even with the raises in minimum wage, garment workers may need to have overtime to supply for their family due to the wage still being ridiculously low (Lund-Thomsen, 2008). If Western retailers/governments did in fact enforce the minimum wage for factories in places such as Asia, then these low working hours would be a plus, even though they are still only following the code to a minimum and workers wouldn’t be forced to do overtime. It is important to understand that in developing countries, codes of conduct and decent work should be created with care and followed up with monitoring of the code and not just announced audits; judging the impact of the code and how it could be manipulated in different circumstances for various countries would also be beneficial (European Parliament, 2017). This is one of the many reasons why the concept of decent work is hard to promote within some developing areas due to the lack of support received from governments and employers. These are just some of the factors recently that the ILO are using to constantly adjust and amend their agenda to create the optimum working conditions for employees.
Decent working conditions in supply chains will always be a struggle to fully control and end mistreatment; however, some of the mentioned ways to promote and protect the agenda can work as shown in the examples given. Each different way to promote and protect rights that I have spoken on, has both benefits and flaws. These different ways to promote/protect cannot be compared to one another within examples due to lack of overall statistics, however the use of Public National Governance can clearly affect hundreds of thousands of businesses making it the most widespread of ways to attempt to secure decent work, although obviously harder and more expensive to monitor (ILO, 2016). The Californian transparency act is one of the most direct approaches at tackling problems at hand, especially in correlation with the question for this assignment; which they are taking initiative using preventative steps to try and stop abusive conditions before they begin. Both Private and Social governance have a close link to one another due to many companies changing their supply chain conditions or setting up a non-profit like Nike, due to pressure from campaign groups and activists (Nissan, 2013). These measures that I have spoken on can be successful when attempting decent working conditions; it depends on many factors such as the countries enforcement stance on policies, what state the garment industry is and many more circumstances.