[hupso title=”VIDEO: What is Worker-driven Social Responsibility? #WSR @BHRRC” url=”https://ciw-online.org/blog/2015/06/bhrrc-video/”]

Business and Human Rights Resource Center releases great new video;

CIW’s Reyes: Corporate social responsibility codes “sound very beautiful in writing, but in reality they lack enforcement”…

Over the past several years, the concept of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) has caught the attention of those who work at the intersection of business and human rights, thanks in large part to the model’s remarkable success in the fight against longstanding abuses in the Florida tomato industry through the Fair Food Program.  From former President Clinton to dairy workers in rural Vermont, human rights observers have recognized the WSR model as one of the few beacons of hope in an otherwise bleak world of human rights abuses in corporate supply chains.

One of WSR’s most staunch proponents is the Business and Human Rights Resource Center (BHRRC), a group dedicated to “track[ing] the human rights policy and performance of over 6000 companies in over 180 countries, making information publicly available.”  As such, the BHRRC has a unique vantage point on the world’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiatives — and also on their routine failure to protect the rights of workers worldwide.  

When BHRRC took an in-depth look at the Fair Food Program, they quickly identified the stark differences between the traditional CSR model and what farmworkers had created to protect their own rights here in Florida, including these essential elements of the WSR model:  

• a worker-authored code of conduct and rigorous worker education process;  
• an independent third party monitoring body with industry leading auditing protocols;  
• an accessible, effective complaint resolution system that workers can use free of the fear of retaliation;
• and meaningful market-based consequences for companies that failed to respect workers’ human rights in the field.  

In an effort to help spread the word about this exciting new model, BHRRC produced the excellent new video at the top of this post, laying out the unique elements of WSR with a focus on the model’s singular emphasis on enforcement.  In the words of the CIW’s Gerardo Reyes, who is featured in the video, corporate social responsibility codes may “sound very beautiful in writing, but in reality, they lack enforcement.”  He continues:

Workers are not part of the conversation, and as long as that is the case, nothing is going to change in the way it needs to, to be real.  Things may change aesthetically for the purposes of PR, but not deeply for the purposes of human rights protections.

So take a moment to check out the video and learn more about the core elements of the Worker-driven Social Responsibility model.  And don’t forget to share it on your social networks!