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Clean Clothes Podcast
Trailer
Bonus
Episode 3
Season 1
Cracking Corporate Impunity
In this episode, our contributors reflect on laws and regulations for holding brands and retailers accountable for violations of worker rights in the factories that supply them, including:
- Nayla Ajaltouni from Collectif Ethique sur L'Etiquette in France tells how campaigners succeeded in getting the first law protecting human rights in supply chains passed in France – and how this law might set a European precedent for stronger worker rights protection.
- Nasir Mansoor from NTUF in Pakistan reflects on the experience of using legal mechanisms to hold KiK accountable for the Ali Enterprises fire.
- Muriel Treibich from the CCC International Office introduces human rights due diligence and presents opportunities including the European Supply Chain.
- Scott Nova from WRC in the USA highlights the closing of a loophole means the section of the US Tariff Act that prohibits companies importing goods made with forced labour could be enforced.
Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: podcast@cleanclothes.org
Speakers:
Nayla Ajaltouni, Coordinator, Collectif Ethique sur L’Etiquette, France
Nasir Mansoor, General Secretary, NTUF (National Trade Union Federation), Pakistan
Muriel Treibich, Lobby and Advocacy Coordinator, Clean Clothes Campaign International Office, Netherlands
Scott Nova, Executive Director, Worker Rights Consortium, USA
- Host: Febriana Firdaus (febrianafirdaus.com)
- Sound Engineering Support: Steve Adam (www.spectrosonics.com.au)
- Court of the Future performers: Free Theatre (www.freetheatre.com.au)
- Production: Matthew Abud with support from Anne Dekker
- Podcast Team: Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei
Full Transcript
JUDGE:
Order! Order! I mean it – I will have order in this court!
Now then. To the defendant. Mr. Ralph Hermes Vuitton
You may deliver your statement.
RHV:
Thank you, Your Honour. May I say with great humility, I’m humbled by the privilege to address this court. Very humbled. Humblingly so.
Because as everyone knows, we at Ralph Vuitton are a humble, ethical, caring, socially responsible, innovative brand ...and we pay record dividends!
The simple fact is – we didn’t know! And our promise is – we will do better!
We can’t know everything our suppliers do. It’s unrealistic.
We have thousands of them! We change them all the time! Some employees even work from home. Are we supposed to visit them too?
I mean, what would happen to my exclusive trench coat in those neighbourhoods? It would be ruined.
JUDGE:
Order! Come on now, let’s have a little order here.
Right. Now Mr. Vuitton. Please keep to the point.
RHV:
Yes your Honour. To put it simply.
Did we make the building a fire trap with no escape? No, we didn’t.
Did we ban the workers from organising together or cut their pay? No, it wasn’t us.
Can you blame me that women are constantly harassed in the workplace? That’s outrageous!
Let me finish with this point. Your Honour, could I say how stylish you would look in a bold red Faux Leather Coat. For you, it would be an affordable 175 Euros.
But if we had to pay for all the things they propose? Why, it could go up to 176! We’d be bankrupt!
Thank you, Your Honour.
JUDGE:
And why are you giving me your business card, Mr Vuitton?
RHV:
Just if you are interested in that Faux Leather Coat.
JUDGE:
This is not a sales pitch, Mr. Ralph Hermes Vuitton. We’re in a court of law. Do you understand?
HOST:
Could that be the court-room of the future?
Where brands must prove that they take care of human rights, through their whole supply chain?
I’m Febriana Firdaus.
Welcome to episode three of the Clean Clothes Podcast.
Today we talk human rights due diligence, and making laws to keep brands honest.
Human rights abuse includes stolen wages, sexual harassment, and union busting.
It has also cost many workers their lives.
This is Nasir Mansoor, General Secretary of the National Trade Union Federation or NTUF in Pakistan.
NASIR:
There was a tragedy in September 2012, where in a factory there was a fire and 260 workers died in that factory. And that factory was producing merchandise for a German brand, its name was KIK. So when we look into the law, even Pakistani law, European law, German law, we didn’t get any space for the workers to go for filing of a case and make them accountable for it.
So in that context we get to know that we should have, not only in Pakistan but also in European Union there would be some kind of a law or some kind of a mechanism to make them account for. Unfortunately after filing a case in Dortmund against KIK in German court, after three years of hearings, the court verdict that on technically on Pakistani laws it was a time bar issue.
HOST:
The push for human rights supply chain laws, has a long history.
Trade Unions and NGOs campaigned on it for decades.
This is Muriel Treibich, Lobby and Advocacy Coordinator for Clean Clothes Campaign
MURIEL:
Of course a lot of the initial efforts were pushed by NGOs and trade unions that highlighted really important cases and important situations where that would happen. And so for years they brought information, reports, they communicated, they campaigned about those issues. And progressively that led also to the international recognition that that was an issue, and that was something that international institutions, governments, the United Nations, had to look at.
In 2011 when you had the United Nations that published their first Guiding Principles on business and human rights. And what it says, is that first states have an obligation to ensure the respect of human rights, but that also companies have a responsibility to protect human rights. And that was let’s say one of the first recognitions, and one of the biggest recognition that yes, international companies have a responsibility to protect human rights across their supply chain and not only in the companies and in the operations they fully own and they fully control.
The human rights due diligence, you have a number of steps that you have to do. First let’s say you have to identify what are the risks in your supply chain, what are the potential negative impacts on human rights and labour rights that exist in your supply chain. Once you identify the risks and the negative impacts, then you have to take steps to seize, to make sure that those risks are stopped, or are prevented, or are mitigated. And then you have to track whether the measures you implemented are put in place, you have to communicate on that. And then you have to provide for remedies when appropriate.
Until today, except in France, we only have voluntary human rights due diligence. There is no obligation for companies to actually protect human rights like that and to use human rights due diligence to do it. And if they do not follow those principles, there are no legally-binding sanctions. And that’s an obvious problem. If it’s voluntary then actually most companies and I’m talking about Europe, most companies in Europe, including the large companies, are not doing human rights due diligence, are not actively working on protecting human rights, and for the few who do so, they actually do it on a really limited scope. So that’s why we’re talking now about mandatory human rights due diligence, because the objective is to make sure that companies are not doing it on their own decision, but that they have a legal obligation to do it and they can be sanctioned if they do not do it properly.
HOST:
So far, only France has passed a law on human rights due diligence, in supply chains.
Collectif ESE, or Collective Ethics Behind the Label, was central to that campaign.
Nayla Ajaltouni is the Collectif’s Coordinator.
NAYLA:
I think everything changes when the UN elaborated and adopted the UN Guiding Principles, the Ruggie Principles, on business and human rights. And it was really the start of a big internal reflection at Collectif Ethique sur L’Étiquette where unions and NGOs and especially some of them, and as a coordinator I thought it was important to be able to analyse and be familiar with this framework and I proposed to the network to organise a big symposium at a national assembly around this question, different round tables. I think the fact that we at some point were all gathered in one same civil society platform, we already had as a common goal to focus on transnational companies and to make them respect the law, a law that we would have to build.
HOST:
In 2012, France also elected the Socialist party to government.
That gave the campaign a real political opportunity.
NAYLA:
We identified MPs that would be committed enough to build legislation and we worked to mobilise civil society towards this new legislation. The second trigger was this terrible accident, this human-created disaster as Kalpona said, of the Rana Plaza. Because it created huge, of course it shocked everybody, and for us I often say, for the rights movement it was a shock but it was not a surprise. So we were prepared, our arguments were already there, our strategy was already there. We knew that we could sell this kind of law to the public as general-interest law and not something for NGOs or people abroad but really something of general interest, we can’t, transnational companies can’t decide on the lives of so many people without being accountable of anything.
We really managed to have a pool of and different kind of media and especially media read by public authorities and economic world on what this law on due diligence is. We also focused a lot on outing the economical world, federation of employers and federation of big companies because they were really working in a very secretive way. Their lobbying was really strong and they had direct access to the power, and we managed and we try to make them express publicly why they are against such laws. And for the first time the biggest federation was obliged to say, to speak about their position in main newspaper and this had an important impact especially on MPs.
HOST:
Companies used familiar arguments to oppose these laws.
MURIEL:
For the private sector the first concern they were raising was the cost. It will cost too much. It will be too difficult. How can you ask us to make sure that everything in our supply chain is human rights and labour rights compliant. It’s too big, we don’t have control over those entities. So their first reaction was to point out the cost and the complexity.
When it comes to the complexity in the supply chain, especially in the garment sector, it’s not something that just comes up. Garment supply chains are not natural occurrence. It’s something that companies actually create and think about, and that was a conscious business choice by the companies. So they created the complexity, and now they’re complaining that their supply chains are too complex to control them.
HOST:
The French campaign was successful – the law passed in 2017.
But it also fell short.
Nayla says it is just one step towards change.
NAYLA:
Let’s say four years campaigning with ups and downs, with a lot of euphoric moments and a lot of very depressive moments.
It’s not the text civil society had campaigned for. There’s not criminal liability for example. But we also knew that we were working on a compromise.
A small legal revolution as a first step. The objective for us was to make a breach in transnational impunity, and to enlarge this breach at the European level. But we know that the European wouldn’t work if one of the important countries, and France hosts one third I guess of the biggest European companies, had this extreme responsibility to start building a law.
So we even published document with the weaknesses of the French law and lessons learned, that we spread already to the Network, to the MPs, to the MEPs. All our advocacy work has now started to encourage to build on those lessons learned and the Commission of course not to repeat the weaknesses of the French law, and to have a much more ambitious directive on duty of care or duty of vigilance.
MURIEL:
It was really really significant that France passes such a law. It gives a precedent. It shows that it’s possible. That you can impose obligations on companies on those issues and that other countries in Europe, Europe itself, and outside of Europe, can also impose similar obligations on their companies.
The whole argument that we didn’t know, it was too far away, we could not have imaged, those arguments would not play any more. That actually companies have an obligation to know, they have an obligation to look for the information and that’s extremely important.
HOST:
Like Nayla says, the French law is a first break in corporate impunity.
The European Commission plans to debate Supply Chain legislation later this year.
Other campaigns are pushing to open this break further.
That includes survivors from the Ali Enterprise fire.
Nasir from Pakistan’s NTUF again.
NASIR:
Because of no legal and legislation and in the European union and especially in Germany, the brands get some kind of sigh of relief. They can’t understand and they can’t learn the lesson from it, but they think they can scott-free. But if there would have been a law they must be punished.
One of our victims’ association chairperson, Saeeda Khatoon whose son was also died in that factory, she went to Belgium, she went to European Union, she talked with the different political parties, in the Germany she also talked with the different political parties and Trade Unions and pressed for legislation or a law as to make the German and the European companies accountable for whatever the crime they committed anywhere in the globe.
HOST:
In early February, Germany published a draft Supply Chain Law.
A vote on the law is promised for this year.
BAILIFF:
Calling the next witness! Please state your name and profession.
GA:
I’m Ganya Adil. I’m a tailor. And I represent the union on my floor.
JUDGE:
Please tell the court the nature of your complaint.
GA:
I have many complaints. Firstly, our factory is dangerous. There’s material piled up everywhere ready to burn, and the escape routes are locked.
The boss says don’t worry about fire. Would he say the same thing to the workers who died in the Ali Enterprises fire in Karachi?
Secondly, our wages are barely enough to feed my family. Judge, my little girl was top of her class last year but now I can’t afford to send her to school.
I ask, would Mr. Vuitton let that happen to his daughter?
It’s not just that our pay is too low. Sometimes they pay us late. Sometimes not at all. The boss doesn’t tell us anything.
JUDGE:
Are you saying the brand knew about all this?
GA:
They don’t want to know. We didn’t get to talk to them anyway.
My union tried to complain. But the boss, he threatened me.
He came so close I could smell his breath. It smelled worse than the pollution from the factory.
Your Honour, he said the police would come. It didn’t feel safe. So I went to my aunt’s village for a while.
It was amazing there. Their factory used to be like ours. But now they are all getting better wages, and the factory is safe.
My aunt told me about the new Supply Chain Laws, and about this court.
I always thought the law was just for the rich and the companies always won. But you seem a nice judge.
JUDGE:
Ms. Adil, please stick to the point. We’re not after compliments here.
GA:
Thank you, I’ve finished, Your Honour.
But may I ask. Do you know who does your robes? And where they come from?
You should find out about that!
HOST:
Europe holds the clearest promise, for human rights Supply Chain laws.
The United States does not have laws like this one on the table.
But change might still be coming.
Scott Nova is Executive Director of the Worker Rights Consortium.
SCOTT:
The US Tariff Act has always prohibited the importation specifically of goods made with forced labour. But for most of the life of that law there was a loophole that prevented it from being enforceable. And that loophole was eliminated during the last years of the Obama administration, and over the ensuing, now going on five years, there has been an attempt within the US Government at an administrative level to begin to enforce that law. The big question is how serious will that enforcement push be. Now one area where we’re seeing the relevance of that legal provision very clearly is in the forced labour crisis in the Uighur region of China. And because about one fifth of the world’s cotton is grown in that region, the brands and retailers around the world who sell cotton garments are neck-deep in this forced labour crisis.
The standard the US Government is applying is this. If the company should have known, either did know or should have known, that forced or trafficked labour was used, then that company and the executives who made the relevant decisions, have broken US Criminal as well as Civil Law, and the executives could be prosecuted, convicted, and go to jail. If that happens, it would send shock waves through corporate America. And if the executives of these corporations understand that they can be held criminally accountable, they can go to jail, for the ways in which they exploit workers in their supply chains, well that’s a night-and-day change from the regime that’s prevailed up until now. And so it would be very interesting to see, to say the least, whether the US Government actually enforces its laws and changes that culture in ways that could have a very profound impact on the lives of workers all across the globe.
If it’s illegal to import a product made with forced labour, why is it legal to import a product made through other abuses of fundamental worker rights? Why is it legal to import a product made in a factory where the workers are subjected systematically to sexual harassment, and have to have sex with supervisors in order to keep their jobs? Why is it legal to import goods from a factory where every time the workers try to organise a union the managers threaten to kill them? Why is it legal to import a product from a factory where the employer systematically underpays workers relative to the legal minimum wage? Right now it is legal. But it’s very difficult to defend that status quo. The vast majority of people in the US, ordinary people in the US, would agree that that should be illegal. And once that discussion begins to happen, there is the potential that that discussion will take off and capture public interest and that you might see real momentum towards change. Now if that happens there’ll be enormous pushback from corporations and their lobby. But if that battle happens, it’s not a foregone conclusion that the corporations will win. Right now that discussion isn’t happening, but I think that it will begin to happen in the not-too-distant future.
HOST:
Campaigners know supply chain laws will not fix everything.
But they can help change the balance.
MURIEL:
It’s one more tool. The objective is to fill out the gap. But that law will of course have to work in conjunction and supporting other developments. And for, let’s say for instance, if supply chain law give the obligation of companies to make sure that they cannot make profits out of human rights violations any more, then that could also help develop stronger, give an incentive also to governments to develop stronger national laws or stronger enforcement of national laws. With such a law for instance, companies will have an obligation to engage with stakeholders on the risks and on the negative impacts and to show that actually when they did, when they have done their assessment on the situation, it’s not only the company that did it on their own, but they also engaged with the people affected or impacted by the business operations. And I think that obligation, that expectation that stakeholders need to be involved, may also support the fact that companies would now have a big obligation to ensure that freedom of association and collective bargaining are better respected in the supply chain.
NASIR:
There is no change and there is no behavioural or practising change from the brands, everything is going as usual. So that’s why we think that there should be some kind of legislation and some kind of a mandatory things binding by the law, that can be work. When the trade union or the labour movement is a weak one, then it will more dependent on the laws and the instruments like that, yeah? We use that one, these instruments to cope with the situation. This is not the ideal situation for us. And we understand that every time these can’t work. But still we put pressure through these instruments on them, workers will get some kind of a sigh of relief and some kind of a weapon in their hand to whenever there’s a situation arise they can use that one, that instrument and that kind of a weapon.
So I think that there are a number of multi-dimensional campaigns and the movements and the strategies to get workers rights and worker rights be protected. Organisation is the one aspect, another one is international solidarity from the pro-worker organisation and the working class, and then we have some kind of a law, it might be a local one, international, or the regional laws also. All these kind of framework can help the workers to get some kind of leverage to resolve their issues.
RD:
This is an S.P.I.N. News Flash and I’m Rush Daley
In breaking news we have a verdict in the Ralph Vuitton case. Our reporter Eva Tru is at the scene. Eva, tell us what’s happened.
ET:
Yes, Rush, the court has made its decision and it’s not what Ralph Vuitton was hoping. The company has to fix workplace safety, and make sure workers are paid the right wages.
They also must allow the workers to organise freely.
Vuitton insisted he never knew what was happening, so he wasn’t to blame.
The Judge’s verdict was familiar for anyone following these cases.
She said Vuitton had to know – and if he didn’t, it’s on him.
The law makes it quite clear that companies must know what’s going on with their suppliers, and also show the public that they know this.
Know and Show – we keep hearing that these days.
RD:
It looks like Vuitton is more Show than Know.
ET:
You could certainly say that Rush.
Vuitton said it was like taking the shirt off his back. Although, we know it’s probably more like a couple of cheap cufflinks.
Rush, I have the star witness with me here, Ganya Adil. Ganya, you must be very happy with this decision.
GA:
Yes, thank you very much, we’re very happy.
It gives us a chance. We don’t expect our bosses to easily give us everything we won today. But now we can fight for our rights with the law behind us.
ET:
It looks like your friends want to celebrate with you.
GA:
Yes, we will have a big, big feast tonight! You should come!
ET:
Thank you, Ganya. Finally, is there anything you’d like to say to Ralph Vuitton?
GA:
Mr. Vuitton is welcome to eat with us too.
And if he needs a new shirt for his back, we’re happy to make him one.
But only for a fair price.
HOST:
Who can tell, who might appear in this court of the future.
It might be Ralph Vuitton. Or Zara Lauren. Or Levi Boss.
But maybe it is getting closer.
That’s the end of our show.
Please email your ideas, feedback, and questions at this address: podcast@cleanclothes.org.
You can also see the email address on the podcast webpage.
Matthew Abud produced this episode, with Anne Dekker, and the Clean Clothes Podcast team.
Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei, and Johnson Chin-Yin Yeung.
Steve Adam was on sound engineering support – and the sound for the Court of the Future.
The Court of the Future was performed by Free Theatre.
I’m Febriana Firdaus. See you next time.