Workers' committees 'eunuchs of freedom of association'

28 May '07

2 min read

Many corporate codes of conduct designed to empower workers and protect their rights are, in fact, being used to neuter their voice and deny them the right to organise and negotiate wages and working conditions with employers, the Global Union for Textiles and Garments claimed.

So instead of leading to improvements in wages and working hours, ten years of codes implementation has seen a fall in real wages and working hours lengthened by as much one third, especially in garment manufacture.

Speaking at a Terra Futura Conference in Florence, Neil Kearney, General Secretary of the Brussels-based International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation put the blame firmly on the social auditors who oversee the application of codes of conduct and on some US corporations who have realised that codes can be an effective tool in preventing workers exercising their right to form trade unions and thus to bargain collectively with company bosses.

Said Mr. Kearney: “Around the world social auditors are promoting workers' committees as an alternative to trade unions claiming erroneously that such committees, even though they are frequently employer dominated, are sufficiently representative to satisfy the ILO's Freedom of Association requirements and thus meet code of conduct commitments."

Either these auditors are ignorant or incompetent or are deliberately colluding with employers to gut codes of their ability to drive workers' rights improvements.

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