Human rights are a business issue too

Human rights are as much a matter for business as they are for governments and corporate responsibility extends far beyond mere legal compliance or a "best-practice business case". The challenge for managers is to understand what their human rights responsibilities mean in practice. A landmark survey of senior executives by the Economist Intelligence Unit finds, not surprisingly, that conditions of employment and work are the most relevant human rights cluster that corporate operations affect. Workplace dialogue is also a relevant responsibility, particularly in environments where challenges exist in respecting fundamental labour rights in various industries with increasingly complex global supply chains. In Asia, numerous well-known international brands and retailers from Nike to Apple have been linked to "sweatshop" conditions and gross labour violations in their supply chains. The tragedies of Foxconn worker suicides in China and the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory in Bangladesh have illustrated the continued difficulties that multinational businesses face in their oversight of suppliers' practices, especially where state governance is weak and local enforcement of laws lax. Importantly, supply chains in developing economies typically span the informal work sector, where legal protection does not exist or has very limited effectiveness. So how can businesses begin a "race-to-the-top" to deliver on corporate obligations to guarantee fundamental rights for the one billion workers in Asia? The International Labour Organisation's "decent work for all" approach, enshrined in the institution's Declaration on Social Justice for Fair Globalisation, is a good starting point. It makes clear that decent work is more than just about jobs. It is more than having just enough. It is about real opportunities for women and men to attain productive work, fair income, employment security, social protection and a voice in the workplace. Decent work is about having conditions of freedom, equity, security and human dignity for all workers. In 2006, governments, employers and workers' organisations across Asia-Pacific committed themselves to an Asia-Pacific Decent Work Decade. This year marks the beginning of the end of the initiative. Good progress has been made in promoting better working conditions in the region, yet tragic failures of labour rights protection too regularly still make the headlines. The labour body's fundamental principles and rights at work provide a framework for businesses to understand, devise and implement policies for promoting decent work for all workers. They are: the freedom to associate and organise, and the freedom to bargain collectively with employers; the elimination of all forms of forced or compulsory labour; the effective abolition of child labour; and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation But conventional practices of auditing and a multiplicity of codes of conduct are not enough to achieve real, sustainable change in supply chains. New approaches are required at different tiers of the supply chain. For example, providing relevant and accessible basic education is crucial to abolishing child labour. Effective partnerships between businesses and local communities could deliver schooling for children and employment opportunities for parents. And there must be recognition that effective business partnerships in local communities cannot be driven by senior executives and corporate leaders alone. Many leading companies already have senior leaders actively involved in human rights issues, but to be truly effective, managers must make sure that company values and actions respect human rights at every turn and resonate with the workforce's expectations of good corporate behaviour. To do that, companies must understand what their employees believe the human rights obligations of the business are. They must also engage in internal communications on human rights issues and show how employees at different levels of the organisation are involved in shaping and implementing the company's human rights policies. Workplace dialogue should be used to facilitate employer and employee collaboration on business and human rights issues as well. Better alignment of these top-down and bottom-up approaches will help ensure a genuine evolution of attitudes and clearer understanding of responsibilities for respecting and delivering on human rights at work. Mimi Zou is the associate director of the Centre for Rights and Justice in the Faculty of Law at the Chinese University of Hong Kong

Human rights are a business issue too

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Organisations should ensure their senior executives, employees and different tiers of the supply chains respect fundamental labour rights