The Pandemic: Road-testing Commitments to Human Rights in Global Supply Chains

Rachel Widdis, School of Law, Trinity College Dublin

 

COVID has raised awareness of the fragility of global supply chains. Images of planes landing laden with PPE on national television are fresh in our minds. The pandemic has also spurred on the discussion of human rights standards in global supply chains and the behaviours of buying companies. Acknowledging there are complex intersecting impacts, the purpose here is to highlight COVID amplified impacts, dissonances and developments. In this, the pandemic has exposed the positions taken when the chips are down, and road tested corporate commitments to respect human rights including labour and health and safety in supply chains. 

In Spring 2020 as the pandemic dawned, orders in the garment sector supply chain were slashed (millions-garment-workers-face-destitution-fashion-brands-cancel-orders). Orders already made up or in process were cancelled, including under force majeure clauses. Even for products already completed and shipped, significant price discounts were demanded. Factories in countries of supply buckled under both mandatory closures and a drop in demand for product. The Clean Clothes Campaign has a live daily blog reporting instances where workers laid off did not receive their wages or compensation under applicable local laws, including in Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia and Vietnam (how-the-coronavirus-influences-workers-in-supply-chains). 

There has been a disproportionate impact on migrant and temporary workers, and women workers. Research on access to nutrition during COVID-19 by the Workers’ Rights Consortium found ‘lost income translated into an inability to access adequate food for themselves and their families’ as well as an overwhelming reliance on borrowing to buy food. Of the respondent garment workers, 70% were female (Hunger-in-the-Apparel-Supply-Chain.pdf). Risks of a spiral into severe labour or other forms of exploitation combine with, for example, measures to tackle modern slavery being inhibited by travel and other restrictions related to the pandemic (modern-slavery-risks-in-supply-chains-during-covid-19). Job losses impacting ability to cover basic needs, and return/ stay at work under threat of non-payment of wages are also widely reported in other sectors, for example, in the electronics supply chain. These are occurring beyond tier 1, further down the supply chain (ICT forced labour risks).

The activity of buying companies is also impacted, although many may benefit from a suite of state supports in their home states. Reports indicate programmes financed by the EU are making support payments to furloughed or laid off garments workers (european-union-doubles-funding-for-garment-workers-in-crisis) concurrently with global brands cancelling or refusing to pay in the same countries. Isolated brighter spots are not discounted, with certain companies stepping in with relief programmes (unilever-to-protect-most-vulnerable-suppliers-as-part-of-covid-19-relief-programme/). 

Further issues with health and safety relating to COVID are documented by the ILO, including factories failing to provide PPE to workers and staying open during lockdown without instituting social distancing, as well as crowded transport of workers to and from factories and workers locked down in cramped dormitories exposing them to infection (ILO Asia). In cruel irony, reportedly some of these factories are producing PPE and rubber gloves (blackrock-top-glove-inadequate-oversight-of-worker-health-safety/). 

Rolling the clock back pre-pandemic, risks to and impacts on the most vulnerable in global supply chains have been long well documented; within the past decade 1,138 people died in a factory collapse (Rana Plaza) supplying global garment brands in the EU, and 258 people in a fire at a jeans factory principally supplying German headquartered KIK (KiK_Pakistan). Corporations are responding to awareness of the human rights and environmental impacts of their operations in their own activities and throughout their value chains, within a context well populated with multistakeholder initiatives, international initiatives such as the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, SDGs, supplier codes of conduct, model contract clauses to protect workers in international supply chains (Principled Purchasing Project), and allied movements in ‘ESG’ and ‘Sustainability’. For present purposes, the first issue is that these are mainly voluntary in nature. As such, business is expected to ‘comply with all applicable laws and respect internationally recognized human rights, wherever they operate’ (UNGP 23), but is not obliged to do so. Secondly, while large numbers of corporations issued related policies, and engaged corporations took action, most did not (Corporate Benchmark 2020 ). 

The pandemic has road tested both commitments concerning supply chains in corporate policy, and to such initiatives. It has amplified the known vulnerability of the people within global value chains, and again underpins the drive towards mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence. In 2020, the EU Commissioner for Justice committed to introduce a legislative initiative including corporate human rights due diligence. In March 2021, the European Parliament adopted a report on corporate due diligence and corporate accountability (JURI). It called on the EU Commission to present legislation ensuring companies address and are held accountable for human rights, environmental and governance risks and impacts throughout their global value chains, including sanctions for non-compliance and civil remedies. The Commission initiative, expected in June, is eagerly anticipated. The impact of COVID on the most vulnerable in global supply chains should feed into obligations, in a new enforceable standard. 

Dr Rachel Widdis teaches Business and Human Rights in the School of Law, Trinity College Dublin.

Suggestion citation: Rachel Widdis, ‘The Pandemic: Road-testing Commitments to Human Rights in Global Supply Chains’ COVID-19 Law and Human Rights Observatory Blog (13 April 2021) https://tcdlaw.blogspot.com/2021/04/the-pandemic-road-testing-commitments.html