A new scholarly paper by a team of environmental experts proposes the expansion of a model originally designed to protect global fisheries from depletion — known collectively as “Fishery Improvement Projects” (FIPs) — to include the protection of fishers’ human rights in the scope of their initiatives;

Authors launch “call to action” proposing collaboration between FIPs and Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) efforts with goal of “increas[ing] uptake and implementation of worker-driven, enforceable agreements, and mandatory HRDD [Human Rights Due Diligence] in seafood value chains” 

Summary:

• FIPs paper’s authors recognize WSR as uniquely effective for human rights enforcement in global supply chains, writing, “any supply chain intervention must look towards worker-driven social responsibility models for effective and enduring change for fishworker communities,” going on to elaborate that fishers must, “know their rights, have access to effective grievance and remediation mechanisms, and have agency over the design and implementation of processes that may directly or indirectly affect them.”

• Authors also recognize shortcomings of FIP model for purposes of human rights due diligence, writing, “We completely agree and acknowledge the the FIP model is not the panacea for improving fishworkers’… rights,” explaining further “we also agree that the current policies, frameworks, and assessment tools in use are imperfect.”

• Authors launch a “call to action” for FIPs to affirmatively expand their goals and actions to include monitoring and protecting fishers’ human rights as part of a broader coalition with WSR initiatives. In this proposed coalition, FIPs efforts and their existing buyer relationships around environmental protection of fisheries “may be leveraged to support binding and enforceable agreements between buyers and fishworker representative organizations advancing human rights and labor rights protections in seafood supply chains.” The authors add, “FIPs should require participating businesses to undertake HRDD.  Specifically, brands and retailers must commit to effectively supporting human rights and environmental due diligence in their supply chains and ensuring it is reflected and enforced in their procurement polices with suppliers.”

• As efforts toward the launch of a pilot WSR program based on the CIW’s Fair Food Program continue in northeast Scotland, the authors’ analysis and call to action offer cause for hope.  The new paper reflects both the growing recognition of the WSR model as a powerful new paradigm for human rights enforcement, as well as the rise of Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) laws and regulations as an emerging force driving increased corporate interest in engaging with WSR initiatives to address longstanding human rights violations in their suppliers’ operations.  

• The history of the traditional CSR model offers abundant cause for concern, however, when contemplating the crossover of existing CSR initiatives into the field of human rights enforcement, and we offer two key cautionary notes for consideration:

1) Do not underestimate the importance of fishers’ expertise in the design and, most importantly, operation of any monitoring mechanisms, and 

2) Do not overestimate the commitment of most brands to meaningful human rights enforcement in their suppliers’ operations.

• Bottom Line: With these two key caveats as guiding principles, a clear path forward toward the expansion of WSR in the global seafood industry begins to take shape behind the leadership of organized workers and worker-based human rights organizations.  While a future of collaboration between workers and their organizations, on the one hand, and existing environmental organizations such as the FIPs, on the other, may certainly hold advantages for both groups, it will only be successful in achieving its stated purpose of enforcing workers’ fundamental human rights in the workplace if workers and their organizations are seated squarely at the head of the table.  In other words, FIPs supporting worker and human rights organizations in advancing WSR projects in the fishing industry will benefit both parties; FIPs undertaking to lead WSR projects in the fishing industry, however, will benefit neither. 

Introduction

A recent scholarly exchange between human rights and environmental experts in the global fishing industry on the question of nascent efforts by environmental organizations to engage in human rights monitoring and protection for fishers has cast light on the broader question of what is the proper role for practitioners of traditional corporate social responsibility, such as the environmental organizations known as Fishery Improvement Projects (FIPs), in relation to emerging Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) initiatives in the seafood industry.  The following is the CIW’s reflection on this important question, based in an analysis of a recent scholarly paper written by a coalition of FIPs practitioners and other environmental experts, titled, “Insights from a community of practice: Integrating human rights in fisheries improvement“.

In a paper from 2023 titled, “Fishery improvement projects: A voluntary corporate “tool” not fit for purpose of mitigating labour abuses and guaranteeing labour rights for workers,”, two longtime human rights experts in the global fishing industry, Dr. Jess Sparks of Tufts University and Chris Williams of the International Transport Workers Federation (ITF), took a critical look at the Fishery Improvement Project (FIP) model in response to nascent efforts to expand the mandate of the model — originally designed and constructed to protect global fisheries from depletion due to over-fishing — to include the monitoring and protection of fishers’ human rights.  Sparks and Williams took those FIPs initiatives to task for their human rights efforts, concluding that FIPs, “as currently constituted and reported, will not be an effective part of the fight against labour exploitation and abuses in global industrial fisheries.”  

Among other concerns with the model’s emerging human rights efforts, Sparks and Williams examined the recently published Human Rights and Social Responsibility Policy for FIPs and concluded that the policy relies too heavily on producer self-assessments and other forms of voluntary monitoring without sufficient worker participation or enforcement power to effectively enforce fishers’ rights at work.  Sparks and Williams also pointed to, “the voluntarisation of what should be binding, international conventions and standards; moving benchmarks that lack meaning for workers; an absence of worker-defined remedy and recourse processes; and confusion around what actually constitutes a human rights due diligence process,” in their wide-ranging critique of efforts by proponents of the model to enter the field of human rights enforcement.  Finally, Sparks and Williams explained their concern with the FIPs embrace of what is often termed the “continuous improvement” approach to enforcement, writing that the FIPs recent efforts, “present a new threat to the fight against labour abuses in supply chains in that they embrace and risk institutionalizing an ideology that moving towards, rather than complying with, fundamental human rights is acceptable.”

[Full disclosure: Jess Sparks and Chris Williams are key partners in the ongoing effort to adapt the Fair Food Program/WSR model to the UK fishing industry, which also includes the CIW and the FFP’s Fair Food Standards Council, as well as the UK-based human rights organization FLEX (Focus on Labor Exploitation).  The adaptation is due to begin with the launch of a pilot program in collaboration with the Scottish White Fish Producers Association in northeast Scotland in the coming months.]

Sparks’ and Williams’ concerns are well founded, and we don’t just say that because they are key leaders in the project to introduce the WSR model to the fishing industry in Scotland.  Rather, we say that, as well, because in a new scholarly paper published in May of this year in response to the critique titled, “Insights from a community of practice: Integrating human rights in fisheries improvement,” a team of FIPs practitioners and other environmental experts themselves agreed with the essence of Sparks’ and Williams’ analysis, writing:

A recent article authored by Williams and Sparks suggests that fishery improvement projects (FIPs) “as currently constituted and reported, will not be an effective part of the fight against labour exploitation and abuses in global industrial fisheries.” We wish to reinforce their argument that driving social responsibility improvements in global fisheries requires a systemic approach combining genuine worker representation, mandatory human rights due diligence, enforceable and legally binding agreements, changes to purchasing practices, and the ratification and implementation of international labor and human rights conventions, and we acknowledge that the FIP model alone will fall short of this. 

In this analysis we will focus on that common ground, examining both the emerging consensus around the WSR model in the global fishing industry and the FIPs authors’ “call to action” for a collaboration to help speed the uptake of the WSR model in fisheries across the globe through the essential, binding commitments of brands and buyers to condition their purchases on suppliers’ compliance with human rights.  We will also take a close look at two critical cautionary notes in response to the FIPs authors’ proposal for a cross environmental/social rights collaboration, caution that emerges from years of bitter human rights history born of the abject, documented failures of the traditional CSR model, in fishing and in global supply chains regardless of industry. 

An emerging consensus

The FIPs practitioners’ paper (Finkbeiner et al.) proposes that FIPs be supported by retailers in their efforts to expand the scope of their projects to include monitoring and enforcement of fishers’ human rights. While the authors’ proposal could quickly become a disaster if managed as this sort of idea has been managed in global supply chains historically, there is in fact more that we agree with in the paper than that with which we disagree.

Indeed, throughout the paper, the authors make a strong and reasoned argument for the expansion of WSR in the global fishing industry — and especially the binding legal agreements at its core that provide the purchasing power to back its claims of human rights compliance, as well as the empowered worker participation necessary to direct any WSR project’s efforts.  They unequivocally identify the model as the only proven social responsibility approach — alongside the traditional trade union model and collective bargaining — capable of meeting the growing human rights enforcement needs of retailers in today’s marketplace, in particular within the European Union where due diligence laws are making real supply chain human rights enforcement a “must have” rather than a “should have” for most large buyers.  Citing, “pervasive evidence that human rights violations are occurring in fisheries and seafood value chains around the world,” the FIPs authors go straight to the essential elements of WSR as the solution:

There is strong agreement among actors with labor and human rights expertise that driving social responsibility improvements in global fisheries requires genuine fishworker representation, mandatory human rights due diligence, enforceable and legally binding agreements, changes to purchasing practices, and the ratification, implementation and enforcement of international labor and human rights conventions.

The authors then quickly go on to identify WSR by name as critical to forging “effective and enduring change for fishworker communities.”  Tying again their argument to the concrete demands of Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD) in the seafood industry, the authors specifically highlight the current adaptation of the Fair Food Program/WSR model to the UK fishing industry as an “important opportunity to look to lessons learned in parallel commodities” and “inform future interventions”:

However, there is a lot more work to do. Recent reviews of existing voluntary schemes in seafood highlight that FIPs need to do more to align with mandatory and comprehensive due diligence processes. And critically, the seafood sector lacks full commitments from retailers and brands to establish binding and enforceable agreements to hold supply chain actors accountable and finance HREDD along their supply chains so the burden is not shouldered by the producers… [W]e want to highlight that any supply chain intervention must look towards worker-driven social responsibility models for effective and enduring change for fishworker communities. While examples of effective WSR have historically focused on terrestrial commodities, lessons learned from the current trial of the WSR model in the UK industrial seafood sector will inform future interventions. The seafood sector also has the important opportunity to look for lessons learned in parallel commodities such as agriculture, the garment industry, and beyond. This would create a strong enabling environment for more mandatory efforts to emerge to ensure binding and enforceable protections for fishworkers.

And in their closing, following their call to action with detailed roles for the various actors along the seafood supply chain, the authors leave no doubt about the ultimate objective of the collaboration they propose:

If each actor takes on the responsibilities above, we can increase uptake and implementation of worker-driven, enforceable agreements, and mandatory HRDD in seafood value chains, supporting seafood market interventions such as the HRSR Policy to fully align with international human rights and labor requirements,and most importantly, fisher and fishworker priorities.

Yet what is perhaps most important in how the authors frame their argument in support of this strategic alliance is what they don’t do.

No false equivalence of CSR and WSR

The concept of a “paradigm shift”, born in the world of systems analysis, is now so well-established it has become part of our popular culture.  What is not as well known or understood, however, is the process of the shift itself, the actual transition between the old and new paradigms, which is often only seen in retrospect and not discussed in real time.  We are undergoing just such a transition in the field of social responsibility today, specifically the field of human rights in corporate supply chains, between the traditional Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) paradigm and the emerging new paradigm of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR).  

And one lesson from that ongoing transition is already painfully clear: The single biggest obstacle to a new paradigm whose time has come is the old paradigm whose time has passed. 

For decades prior to the Fair Food Program’s launch in 2010, Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, was the dominant paradigm for addressing human rights in global supply chains.  During that time, billions of dollars went into building and funding an entire industry of for-profit auditors and certification schemes that were primarily intended to protect the brand reputations of the large corporations that hired them, as opposed to protecting the human rights of the workers who made the profits of those corporations possible. The CSR model relies on voluntary commitments and periodic outsourced audits; it lacks accessible and effective complaint mechanisms that can protect workers from retaliation and is effectively devoid of meaningful enforcement power.

 There are many tragic examples of the human cost paid for retail brands’ reliance on CSR certifications, including in the history of the Fair Food Program itself, which was born of a decades-long struggle by farmworkers in Immokalee, Florida, to end generations of exploitation and abuse — from sexual assault to modern-day slavery — in the fields of the United States.  Exhibit A: In 2008, just weeks before the last brutal slavery case — US v. Navarrete — surfaced in Immokalee, and still two years prior to FFP implementation, an industry-sponsored auditing organization issued a clean bill of labor health to the very same farms where the victims of the Navarrete forced labor operation were working at the time.  In that case, workers were chained, beaten, and locked inside a box truck at night, while being forced to work for little or no pay during the day, among a myriad other indignities, facts that entirely eluded the auditor’s cursory assessment. Consistent with the brand-protection objectives of the CSR model, however, the auditing organization’s declaration that they had “found no slave labor” was delivered at a press conference as part of a high-profile press junket to Immokalee organized by buyer and grower representatives in public response to the CIW’s claims of a human rights crisis in Florida’s tomato fields.  Needless to say, the event was a public relations disaster. In the wake of the failed press junket and the successful prosecution of the Navarrete operation, the fast-food company that organized the press event soon gave up its resistance to the CIW’s campaign and became the third major company to sign a Fair Food Agreement.  The auditing firm, on the other hand, continued to do business as usual, the black-eye incurred in their visit to Immokalee healing quickly and proving, ultimately, to be just another forgotten example of the ethical poverty, and true purpose, of the CSR model. 

Five years later, in 2013, the garment factory that collapsed at Rana Plaza in Bangladesh — killing over 1100 workers — had likewise been recently certified by a similar for-profit auditing organization. The workers who died needlessly in that horrendous disaster simply had no safe channels to make their voices heard or to denounce the life-threatening conditions of which many of them were aware.  Their deaths were not, however, in vain, as soon following the collapse the Bangladesh Accord, today known as the International Accord for Health and Safety in the Textile and Garment Industry, the first international replication of the WSR model born with the launch of the Fair Food Program in Immokalee.  

Most recently, in 2023, a long-term study revealed that the two most prominent CSR-inspired multi-stakeholder initiatives in agriculture, Fair Trade USA and the Equitable Food Initiative (EFI), had certified farms in Mexico where farmworkers reported indicators of forced labor, including recruitment through deceptive practices, withholding of documents and wages, retaliation, and isolated, sub-standard living conditions. Academic researchers who spoke with workers on the farms report that both of these programs outsourced auditing, while providing no ongoing effective complaint resolution mechanism or enforceable measures to protect workers’ rights.  And in a separate study, researchers report that workers interviewed on dairy farms in the U.S. in 2021 were completely unaware that they were working on Fair Trade USA certified farms and knew of no channels through which to raise complaints or concerns.  All the while a proven WSR alternative, the Milk with Dignity Program, has existed for nearly a decade in the dairy industry but is still fighting to expand beyond the supply chain of the one major brand that signed on to its groundbreaking program in 2017.

These examples are only the tip of the iceberg of evidence of the failure of the CSR paradigm when it comes to protecting human rights in corporate supply chains, and of the obstacle CSR programs can represent to the expansion of WSR programs to workers who desperately need their proven protections.  In fact, the damage caused by the continued reliance on these traditional certification schemes has grown so stark that some consumer groups have initiated efforts to hold certification programs accountable for their unsubstantiated claims, when devastating findings of human rights violations, including child labor, are found under their stamps of approval. 

So, why — despite the fact that virtually every serious human rights, government, business and academic observer has recognized the distinct contrast between the unique effectiveness of the WSR model and the many documented shortcomings of the traditional CSR model — does the CSR paradigm remain the dominant paradigm in global supply chains today?  Why haven’t more brands moved their resources behind the new, proven WSR paradigm that can actually make their stated claims of social responsibility real?  Why aren’t more workers in fields and factories — and fishing vessels — around the globe covered by the same proven, market-backed protections today as are workers on Fair Food Program farms?  

In short, why does the shift from an old, failed paradigm to a new, proven paradigm take so long to happen when the stakes, from sexual assault to modern-day slavery, are so high?  

One answer to that question is the false equivalence between CSR and WSR that all too many brands and retail food corporations cling to today.  

This objectively, and patently, wrong notion holds that all social responsibility is essentially created equal, and it is a favorite refuge of corporate supply chain managers, regardless of industry, that has ravaged workers and their communities around the globe since the birth of the Fair Food Program in 2010. By equating certification schemes that are essentially voluntary, have no real means for worker participation, and no real power to enforce their claims, with WSR programs that are designed, implemented, and operated through the leadership of workers themselves and backed by the purchasing power of the participating brands, the corporations seeking that refuge are able to tell their consumers — and their own supply chain staff of buyers and social responsibility personnel — that they are doing all they should do, all they can do, to protect workers in their supply chains against the stories of human rights violations that occasionally make their way through the media into the public consciousness.  And as long as those certification schemes are cheaper and less cumbersome for the corporations who choose them — and as long as the certification schemes themselves support the claim of their equivalence with the worker-driven alternatives — most brands  will continue to seek that refuge.  

All of which is a prolonged prologue to note that — to their credit — the authors of the FIPs paper studiously avoid the trap of false equivalence.

In fact, throughout the paper — and even while strongly arguing for a continued role for FIPs in a broader collaboration between environmental and human rights efforts — the authors make plain their recognition of the limitations of the FIP model for the purpose of human rights enforcement, writing in no uncertain terms in the introduction to their analysis:

We completely agree and acknowledge that the FIP model is not the panacea for improving fishworkers’ (inclusive of fishers and workers throughout the value chain) rights. Moreover, we agree that driving social responsibility improvements requires a systemic approach combining genuine worker representation,mandatory human rights due diligence, enforceable and legally binding agreements, and changes to purchasing practices. Finally, we also agree that the current policies, frameworks, and assessment tools in use are imperfect.

But they don’t stop with a simply hand wave of recognition and move on to an argument still essentially asserting equivalence.  Instead, they go on to probe their own model further for its weaknesses when measured against the necessary tools for effective human rights protection and honestly identify the limited objectives of the key elements of their approach, such as identifying potential risks or increasing transparency.  Of their “Social Responsibility Assessment” tool (SRA), they write:

The tool itself does not purport to constitute an entire human rights due diligence process (identify, prevent, mitigate, and account for human rights risks in supply chains), but can be used to identify actual or potential risks across a broad range of labor and human rights in a diversity of contexts (from artisanal to industrial).

And of their Human Rights and Social Responsibility Policy (HRSR) they write:

FIPs have faced several challenges in the implementation of the HRSR Policy including… inadequate support from buyers and retailers, and building the expertise and capacity needed to meet the requirements… While the HRSR Policy has some way to go to come into alignment with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (which mandates human rights due diligence (HRDD) for all businesses), the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, and the ILO Tripartite Declaration on Principles concerning Multinational Enterprises and Social Policy, the HRSR Policy marks a step forward for increased transparency in the seafood sector and an opportunity for seafood buyers to strengthen their own HRDD efforts, which may support and contribute to broader systemic change.

And most importantly they do not attempt to claim that those limited objectives are sufficient for real human rights enforcement, but rather hew to an intellectually honest definition of the elements of human rights due diligence and recognize the interim, supportive role the FIP model can play in helping to advance worker-driven efforts that are in fact — and in contrast to the FIP model — fit for that particular purpose.  In fact, they begin their “call to action” by reiterating this, the central thesis of their paper:

We want to reinforce Williams and Sparks’ argument that driving social responsibility improvements in global fisheries requires a systemic approach combining genuine worker representation, mandatory human rights due diligence, enforceable and legally binding agreements, changes to purchasing practices, and the ratification and implementation of international labor and human rights conventions, and we acknowledge that the FIP model alone will fall short of this. FIPs and the FisheryProgress.org HRSR Policy must be used as part of a broader systems approach supporting meaningful fishworker engagement and commitments to and enforcement of international human and labor rights standards.

And it merits recognition that, in doing so, they finish by again clearly and correctly identifying the twin pillars of the WSR model, the “systems approach” with which the FIPs authors propose to work in alliance: “meaningful fishworker engagement and commitments to and enforcement of international human and labor rights standards.”  It is impossible to overstate how rare it is for practitioners of the CSR paradigm to speak so plainly and assuredly of the inherent limitations of their model when the purpose is the protection of human rights, of the superiority of the WSR paradigm for that same purpose, and of their hope to work together toward the expansion of the WSR model in the industry where they work.

A call to action

The authors end their paper with a concrete call for a unified front across environmental and labor organizations in support of one goal: real human rights enforcement for fishers.  

Seeking to, “bridge labor rights and fisheries communities of practice and create an aligned signal to industry to engage in human rights due diligence in a way that is inclusive of and driven by workers,” they write:

We are at a critical juncture where civil society organizations have an opportunity to leverage and integrate deep expertise and experience in fisheries, conservation, human and labor rights, and decades of relationship building and engagement with fishworkers, fishing communities, and their representative organizations. Civil society organizations can integrate these diverse approaches and expertise by:

– Playing a crucial role in strong advocacy and whistleblowing efforts holding governments accountable as primary human rights duty bearers and businesses accountable to HREDD.

– Working directly with seafood businesses and governments helping to augment and build capacity in their social responsibility efforts (i.e. procurement policies, supplier codes of conduct, due diligence processes, grievance mechanisms, legislation and enforcement).

– Support fishworkers and their communities and representative organizations to organize and know and claim their rights in seafood value chains.

They go on to elaborate roles for multiple sectors — including states, seafood businesses, civil society organizations, philanthropic foundations, and academics and researchers — toward advancing the goals of this collaboration.  And, again, in concluding their call they leave no doubt as to the unifying objective of their proposed alliance:

In summary, we feel there is an urgency for labor, human rights, science, and conservation actors to come together to act in concert, aligning to the needs of fishers and fishworkers while ensuring human rights due diligence in sustainable seafood supply chains…  If each actor takes on the responsibilities above, we can increase uptake and implementation of worker-driven, enforceable agreements…

It is difficult to imagine a more welcome declaration in these still very early stages of the adaptation of the WSR model to the global fishing industry.  WSR efforts, despite their unmatched track record for remedying and preventing longstanding and egregious human rights violations, are far, far more accustomed to resistance and opposition than calls for alliance when approaching a new sector.  

The devil, of course, may still be hidden in the details of how such an alliance might actually take shape, as true collaborations across environmental and labor efforts are rare, not to mention across CSR and WSR efforts, which would generously be described as vanishingly rare.  Interests are interests, after all, and interests are powerful things, be they industrial or organizational.  And despite the authors’ repeated recognition of the essential role of worker organizations and worker leadership in successful WSR initiatives, the specter of disputed leadership hangs over many a failed collaboration.

So while a sincere optimism is certainly merited in response to the FIPs authors’ analysis and closing call to action, a healthy dose of caution, too, is a wise prescription for all at this still early juncture.

Two notes of caution as we contemplate next steps

Among other things, the FIPs paper’s authors propose to leverage their model’s existing relationships with buyers to help move those buyers to join WSR initiatives and commit to conditioning their purchases on compliance with human rights, as monitored and enforced by mechanisms designed and effectuated by fishers themselves.  That sort of contribution would be essential to an effective collaboration and an immeasurable boost to the efforts to make WSR ultimately the norm in the global fishing industry.  They also propose to continue carrying out the monitoring efforts that many FIPs have undertaken in recent years and that were the spark that set off the exchange of papers between Sparks and Williams, on the one hand, and the team of FIPs authors, on the other.  Those two roles — leveraging their existing buyer relationships and continuing their ongoing work around transparency and identifying issues within their projects — are the heart of the proposed FIP contribution to broader, systems-based, worker-driven efforts, and are a good place to start in the conversation on cautionary notes as the work on the ground proceeds. 

Taking the latter of the two roles first, we come to Caveat #1:

Do not underestimate the importance of fishers’ expertise in the design and, most importantly, operation of any monitoring mechanisms.  

The FIP model is well established in the field of its original purpose, and that is for good reason.  It was built by, and is managed by, experts in the field of fisheries, including, appropriately, a wide range of environmental and animal scientists.  According to the authors of the paper itself, their team is made up of a, “diverse range of experience and expertise in fisheries spanning FIP (and non-FIP) participants, academia, human rights experts, conservation practitioners, development practitioners…”  Those are all occupations and people with a wealth of relevant insight and experience in the field at hand, and who keep up to date with all the latest science and policy around the topic of fishery conservation.  

The same cannot be said, of course, of the relevance of their experience when the topic is the monitoring and enforcement of fishers’ human rights. In fact, as mentioned above, the authors themselves write about the difficulties they have faced in expanding their mandate to human rights:

FIPs have faced several challenges in the implementation of the HRSR Policy including… building the expertise and capacity needed to meet the requirements.

Indeed, to their credit, they never shy away from emphasizing the importance of worker participation, and in their call to action the authors write that any effective state intervention in the industry “must include”:

… a strong legal framework supporting fishworkers’ rights to organize and collective bargaining, with critical attention to groups at higher risk, such that fishworkers know their rights, have access to effective grievance and remediation mechanisms, and have agency over the design and implementation of processes that may directly or indirectly affect them.

But to say this in an academic paper and to incorporate it into the work on the ground — every step of the way, from conception to implementation — are two different things altogether.  

In the case of human rights, as opposed to that of fishery conservation, the most valuable expertise is generally defined as that gained through lived experience as a person whose rights are under threat.  Workers are most often the people who are present when their rights are being violated, and consequently they know how, when, and where those violations tend to take place.  Workers also know who the bad actors are that are responsible for the violations.  All of that intimate knowledge goes a long way to building effective mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement, and in particular codes of conduct that include all the relevant standards that workers themselves, and their organizations, would include in the definition of a more just workplace.

But while worker input into the design of any rights enforcement program ahead of implementation is essential, it is the ongoing, day-to-day participation of workers once the program is up and running that will ultimately determine whether the program succeeds or fails.  And that requires two key elements: 1) a complaint investigation and resolution process, and 2) the power to protect workers from retaliation for using the complaint investigation and resolution process.  Despite all the (non-union) “grievance mechanisms” and “complaint lines” popping up in the world of social responsibility today, it is exceedingly rare to find an effective complaint investigation and resolution mechanism outside the context of a WSR program for one simple reason: Power, or, better said, the lack of power to both protect workers from retaliation when they use the mechanism, and to require employers to cooperate with the investigative process and actually implement any resolution or corrective action plan that emerges from that process.

The lack of real enforcement power will inevitably, 100% of the time, doom any human rights program to failure, because workers will not use a program they know can’t protect them. And if workers do not use or trust the program, then all the “workers’ voice” mechanisms in the world will not identify a single abuse or abuser, the program will die on the vine, and any hope that the program might transform the workplace will wilt right along with it.  

Perhaps this is why the FIPs authors write of their Human Rights and Social Responsibility Policy:

Importantly, due to its nascent implementation, we do not yet understand the extent of positive benefits or unintended outcomes associated with the HRSR Policy for fishworkers. This will require independent and rigorous research with adequate engagement from fishworkers.

Without being closer to the process on the ground it is difficult to tell with any certainty, but it would appear from that quotation alone that engagement from fishworkers is not already an essential part of the HRSR Policy itself.  What we do know with great certainty is that even within the first year — and with absolute certainty within the first several years — of the Fair Food Program, the transformative power of the program was indisputable, and we knew that because of the constant, redundant worker feedback loops built into the program, from the worker-to-worker education sessions on rights under the FFP, to the 24/7 complaint investigation and resolution process, to the annual deep-dive audits.

Worker voice, with real power to make that voice effectively heard, is indispensable to effective human rights efforts, and the FIPs are not, as Sparks and Williams said in the paper, “as currently constituted and reported”, built for that purpose.  That is why any effective coalition between worker organizations and FIPs that might come together around human rights enforcement must be founded on the rock of worker leadership, from design to implementation to operation.

And the question of real power brings us back to the top of this section — the leveraging of the FIPs’ current buyer relationships to drive more binding legal commitments from brands to human rights — to our Caveat #2:

Do not overestimate the commitment of most brands to meaningful human rights enforcement in their suppliers’ operations.

There is a popular lesson among high school math teachers on the concept of infinity based on something called Zeno’s Paradox: In essence it asks, if your goal is to reach a wall across a room, can you achieve your goal by taking a series of half steps, half way to the wall, half way to the wall, and half way to the wall again?  The answer is no, at least not in theory.  Even an infinite series of half steps will still leave you forever short of reaching your goal.

While solving Zeno’s paradox helped Newton invent modern calculus, it seems that the paradox has never been solved for the vast majority of social responsibility managers and corporate decision-makers who choose CSR over WSR to monitor and enforce human rights in their companies’ supply chains.  Half measure after half measure, they never actually reach their stated goal, and so real human rights compliance remains forever beyond their reach.  

And that’s ok for most corporate decision-makers, because while they can’t necessarily show meaningful results, they can show most consumers and critics that the company is making an effort to address the problem, even if 30 years of documented failure reveals the folly of their approach.  

And therein lies the existential conflict of interests when it comes to protecting human rights in corporate supply chains: The two parties at opposite ends of the supply chain, workers and social responsibility managers, are looking at the same problem, but they are seeing it through decidedly different lenses.  

For workers, the human rights violations in question are violations of their own rights, and so their overwhelming self-interest lies in remedying the violations that have already happened and preventing future violations.  For the vast majority of their colleagues at the other end of the supply chain, however, the human rights violations are perceived primarily through the lens of the marketing crisis they cause, if they are seen at all, and so their self-interest lies not in ending the violations themselves, but in ending the marketing crisis that is costing the company time and money to defend through costly crisis management.  Consequently, for workers, the “wall” they are seeking to reach in this particular version of Zeno’s Paradox is an end to the violations, so no half-measure with regards to human rights enforcement will ever be acceptable; for the brands, however, their “wall” is an end to the marketing crisis, so any human rights half-measure that ends the crisis is perfectly acceptable, and the half-measure that ends the crisis at the smallest cost to the company is preferable.  

While these precepts are generalizations and so by definition there will be exceptions, they are in fact the norm and the reason why CSR remains the dominant paradigm still today despite a 30-year track record of failure to end egregious human rights violations, and despite the existence of an alternative, new paradigm with a 15-year track record with ample evidence of documented success.  

And they are also the reason why any organization seeking to help workers protect their own human rights should be particularly cautious when offering brands an alternative, half-measure for addressing violations in the workplace. 

In this new context, we again have two parties — this time the well-intentioned NGO and the supply chain manager — who perceive the problem, and consequently the solution, from differing perspectives.  For the NGO, like the worker in the first example, the problem at hand is how to prevent human rights violations, and the half-measure is offered not as a solution, in and of itself, but as a piece of a broader package, a supportive part of a larger, more comprehensive whole that, including the full measures that any worker would demand, will in fact remedy and prevent violations.  For the supply chain manager, however, the goal remains to manage and hopefully extinguish the marketing crisis, and the half-measure offered by the NGO, if effective in achieving that goal, will most likely be the only commitment the brand will be willing to make, because doing anything more when the half-measure already suffices to allay public concerns would be money and time spent in vain.  Interests, as always, are interests.

This potential pitfall is a real and present danger, even in the early stages of the FIPs’ proposed expansion into human rights monitoring.  Indeed, one FIPs proponent recently framed the argument in favor of half-measures in an op/ed, published in the online industry journal SeafoodSource, with the oft-heard aphorism, “We can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”  That line of logic can make a lot of sense in the right context, when arguing that it is better to take some initial, limited steps toward human rights enforcement while more effective, worker-driven initiatives come together and take shape, than to do nothing at all.  But in the corporate supply chain context, if the past is prologue, the op/ed author has gotten the dynamic exactly backwards.  As noted earlier in this analysis, the history of CSR is littered with the tragic consequences of brands making the good (or not even so good) be the enemy of the perfect.  Even assuming the best of intentions, CSR initiatives have repeatedly provided corporations — acting entirely within the parameters of their own self-interests, as should be expected — an escape route from public pressure for more comprehensive, effective solutions, especially when those more effective solutions are perceived as more costly, and more cumbersome, that the half-measures.  

In short, CSR initiatives intended to be temporary placeholders all too often end up taking the place of more effective WSR initiatives all together, when brands, pursuing their own interests, are presented with the option. 

Clearly, the FIPs paper’s authors are fully aware of this dynamic.  Indeed, the authors even briefly touch on the critique in the paper themselves, when addressing the limitations of their Human Rights and Social Responsibility (HRSR) Policy, writing, “Rather than providing a ‘get out’ for businesses, the HRSR Policy has drawn attention to human rights issues in a more diverse set of supply chains.”

But this cautionary note is simply and sincerely offered in an effort, from the perspective of the longest-running WSR program to date, to “share lessons learned” with the goal of providing “directions for a strategy,” in keeping with the authors’ hopes for the proposed collaboration.  The Fair Food Program has compiled a truly remarkable track record over the past 15 years, and has expanded significantly in that time from its start in the Florida tomato industry.  But if corporate social responsibility decisions were made on the basis of the efficacy of any given program in remedying and preventing longstanding human rights violations, and not its marketing efficacy, the FFP would have expanded many times over its current reach and countless more workers would benefit from its proven protections against sexual harassment, sexual assault, wage theft, discrimination, dangerous working conditions, and modern-day slavery.  The fact that it hasn’t, despite the WSR model’s exceptional track record, is one of the strongest pieces of available evidence that corporate decision-making on human rights functions as described above, repeatedly and predictably giving marketing concerns preference over human rights due diligence.  Consequently, the choice of whether the FIPs’ human rights initiatives are seen as interim measures that should only be considered as part of a more comprehensive package including worker-driven programs, as the FIPs authors themselves conceive of them in the paper, or as complete and sufficient alternatives to more cumbersome worker-driven solutions, as many corporations will want to see them, may not be entirely in the hands of the FIPs themselves, and the authors should expect to have to take every precaution to ensure that they are not used beyond their intended purpose. 

In the final analysis, we share the authors’ hope that the dynamic that has held progress back for too long is today changing, thanks in large part to the new HRDD laws and regulations emerging from the European Union.  But if history has taught this program anything, it is that even the most compelling forces can take a maddeningly long time to bring about meaningful change, and in the meantime it is incumbent on all of us to guard against half-measures.  

In other words, FIPs supporting worker and human rights organizations in advancing WSR projects in the fishing industry will benefit both parties; FIPs undertaking to lead WSR projects, or allowing their efforts to displace true worker-led initiatives will benefit neither. 

Summary

The history of CSR programs in relation to WSR initiatives is not a happy one, with CSR-based certification schemes regularly serving as the willing partners of brands looking to avoid the deeper commitment required of them by the WSR model.  In that context, ineffective and inadequate CSR programs occupy the space that, by any objective logic, should be filled by a WSR initiative with its proven human rights protections backed by real market power, denying workers the benefit of those protections with often tragic consequences.  Given that history, it is exceedingly rare to hear CSR practitioners not only openly discuss the limitations of their own model, but also affirmatively recognize the superiority of the WSR model and, further still, assert that any corporation serious about protecting human rights in its supply chain must not be satisfied with CSR measures but rather must incorporate all the proven elements that comprise the WSR model in their social responsibility efforts.  The FIPs paper stands out for all those reasons.  

And so, for their honesty and transparency, the authors should be taken seriously when they write in the conclusion of their paper:

Ultimately, we are all working towards the same objective — elimination of human and labor rights violations and meaningful protection of fishworkers and their communities — and we are stronger when we work together.  This requires listening, learning, and tolerance of differing views and experiences, and a focus on constructive solutions.  Above all, this requires placing fishworkers, their communities, and representative organizations at the forefront of this dialogue and future efforts.  We hope this article will generate healthy and productive solutions-oriented dialogues that bridge labor rights and fisheries communities of practice and create an aligned signal to industry to engage in human rights due diligence in a way that is inclusive of and driven by workers, regardless of the environmental sustainability model they are using.  

The still nascent effort to build a WSR program in the UK fishing industry, beginning with the launch of a pilot off the northeast coast of Scotland in the coming months, led by the International Transport Workers Federation — and advised in part by the CIW and the Fair Food Standards Council of the Fair Food Program, along with the UK-based human rights organization FLEX — is just such an initiative.  It is also the first initiative of its kind, and so its architects must take pains to ensure that it is constructed carefully, hewing closely to the principles and processes of the WSR model. That will not be easy.  Many of the key partners and industry players who must step back from the unfettered leadership to which they have become accustomed for the program to have a chance to succeed will naturally find the transition difficult.  The worker leadership that is the heart of the new paradigm will feel like overreach to both buyers and employers alike, because in the traditional CSR paradigm, workers played little or no role at all in designing or managing the certification schemes that audited their workplaces.  It will take time for those key partners to learn the new dynamics of WSR and trust the process, and in the meantime friction will be unavoidable.  As for the other players in the old paradigm — the CSR-based NGOs and industry councils that populated the stage in the past but have no real role in the WSR model — they will find their new place off-stage difficult to accept.  The WSR model is fundamentally a partnership among workers and their organizations, employers and buyers, and finds all the expertise in those three players that it needs to effectively monitor and enforce the workers’ human rights.  That new configuration renders the vast industry of third party auditors and multi-stakeholder organizations that evolved in response to the needs of the CSR model in many, if not most, cases superfluous.

And that is why the FIPs article is so important.  By writing, “… any supply chain intervention must look towards worker-driven social responsibility models for effective and enduring change for fishworker communities,” and going on to elaborate that fishers must, “know their rights, have access to effective grievance and remediation mechanisms, and have agency over the design and implementation of processes that may directly or indirectly affect them,” the authors have taken an unequivocal stand on the proper road to real human rights enforcement in the global fishing industry.  With that as its North Star, the relationship between CSR initiatives and WSR programs in the protection of fishers human rights is clear, and unimaginable time and resources can be saved rather than spent needlessly in competition and conflict.  Instead, when and where it is possible and additive, CSR efforts can reinforce and support WSR initiatives, and, in the inverse, where it is not necessary, resources will not be directed toward less effective alternatives to WSR.  

And thanks to this proposed alliance, nascent and growing WSR programs will find fewer forces acting against them as they seek to expand their proven protections to workers who desperately need them, and new collaborations available to them where needed.  That will make an already uphill climb a little bit easier, and, perhaps most importantly, it will help speed the day that industry leaders, buyers and employers alike, come to trust and embrace the new model, as have many participating growers and participating buyers in the Fair Food Program for now more than a decade.