The TUC brings together more than 5.5 million working people who make up our 48 member unions. The TUC and unions are campaigning for new legislation that would give organisations 1 greater legal responsibility for preventing labour and human rights abuses and environmental harms in their global value chains. 2 We welcome Labour’s commitment in the National Policy Forum to “assess the best way to prevent environmental harms, modern slavery and human and labour rights abuses in both private and public sector supply chains including effective due diligence rules,” in government. 3 The TUC recognises the government’s intention to deliver on this commitment, as stated by Baroness Jones in the House of Lords: “The Government is clear on the need to prevent environmental harms and human and labour rights abuses in both private and public sector supply chains and will take an evidence-based approach as we assess the best ways to achieve this…We will consult with stakeholders as we consider any further action.”4
New legislation would lead to better regulation of global value chains and promote decent work and respect for workers’ rights in the UK and globally. It would signal a fresh approach from this government that respecting labour and other human rights and protecting the environment is central to sustainable and inclusive growth, and that growth will not come at the expense of harms down global value chains. This fresh approach would help restore the UK’s reputation on the global stage.
The TUC has long campaigned for legal reform to create a regulatory environment that encourages high standards of business behaviour and good employment practices. Our current corporate governance system prioritises the rights and interests of shareholders over those of other stakeholders, contributing to short-termism and business models based on the exploitation of workers, both in the UK and in global value chains, and environmental destruction. The TUC has campaigned for worker directors to comprise one third of the board of companies with more than 250 staff to bring a workforce perspective to corporate decision-making. We also call for reform of directors’ duties so that directors would be required to promote the long-term success of the company as their primary aim, removing the priority currently given to the interests of shareholders. Our proposed reformulation would require directors to take account of the interests of the workforce and investors; relationships with suppliers, the community and customers; and impact on the environment and human rights. These reforms would help to create incentives for high standards of corporate practice. However, directors’ duties are not directly enforceable (other than by minority shareholders), so while they are important in creating a positive business environment, they would not make businesses liable for the harms that they cause or contribute to. We believe that due diligence legislation would complement reformed directors’ duties, and would provide a mechanism to support their effective implementation.
The TUC has long called for stronger regulations and adherence to international labour standards to protect workers’ rights throughout global value chains. We are represented on the board of the Ethical Trading Initiative, the steering board for the UK National Contact Point for Responsible Business Conduct and the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Governing Body. The TUC worked closely with the European Trade Union Confederation during the passage of the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, and we work alongside the UK’s Corporate Justice Coalition, which is also calling for new legislation.5
Previously, the TUC played a key role in lobbying British businesses to support and fund the Bangladesh Accord on Fire & Safety and has worked directly with brands sourcing textiles from Leicester to gain union access to factories to directly challenge and remedy instances of exploitation.
Through our charitable arm, TUC Aid, 6 we have supported training on collective bargaining and leadership skills for women workers in Bangladeshi garment supply chains, and supported Guatemalan banana workers to help end anti-union violence and secure new workplace agreements.
Based on legal advice commissioned by the TUC, the most effective way for the UK to establish and enforce organisations’ global value chain responsibilities would be to enact robust mandatory due diligence legislation which:
Organisations that failed to carry out their legal obligations would be legally liable for harms relating to breaches of human rights, employment and labour rights and environmental standards.
The TUC believes there should be strict, joint and several liability in UK domestic supply chains, for core rights such as sick pay, holiday pay and the National Minimum Wage. Strict liability means liability which does not depend on actual negligence or intent to harm. This would mean that any contractor/employer in the value chain would be strictly liable (no defence) for core employment rights breaches in UK domestic value chains.
New legislation could be based on the ‘failure to prevent’ model, which is used in the Bribery Act, the Criminal Finances Act and the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. This model was recommended by Parliament’s Joint Committee on Human Rights and identified as legally feasible by the British Institute of International and Comparative Law. 7
The ITUC’s 2024 Global Rights Index indicates that almost nine out of ten countries worldwide violated the right to strike, while about eight in ten countries denied workers the right to bargain collectively for better terms and conditions. This reflects a multi-year trend of worsening workers’ rights. 21 The ITUC also stresses that the current model of trade “keeps millions of workers in poverty and precarious work” and “ruthlessly exploits the labour of women and migrants”. 22
Legislation to increase corporate accountability will help prevent some of these harms, examples of which are summarised below.
Tesco
Tesco continues to face a landmark lawsuit in the UK brought by 130 Burmese migrant workers who were employed within its supply chain. The claimants worked in a garments factory in Thailand which manufactured clothing for Tesco’s own F&F brand and are represented by Leigh Day.
The workers allege that they typically worked a minimum of 99 hours per week, sometimes had to work through the night so the factory could fulfil urgent purchase orders, and that they only had one day off per month. The majority of workers report being paid less than £4 a day, while the Thai minimum wage was approximately £7 for an 8-hour day. Many were paid according to the number of items they produced and did not receive overtime pay, with these circumstances leaving the workers vulnerable to overtime exploitation and often in a cycle of debt. It is alleged that the conditions in the factory were hazardous and abusive, and many of the workers also lived in dormitory accommodation within the factory compound for which the rent was paid from their wages. The workers were reliant on their employment at the factory for their immigration status, and some allege that their immigration/work permit documents were withheld by the factory managers. Others claim that the factory retained control of bank accounts into which wages were transferred, and that there were then shortfalls in the cash payments actually distributed to the workers.
The claimants are seeking compensation for physical and psychological personal injuries caused by the working conditions and alleged forced labour, damages for false imprisonment and compensation for their related economic losses.
The claim is being brought in (the equivalent under Thai law of) negligence and, groundbreakingly, includes Intertek, a global supply chain assurance provider, as a co-defendant with the allegation that it failed to conduct adequate audits of the factory on behalf of Tesco. It is claimed that effective audits would have prevented the claimants from suffering the harm to which they were exposed.
Legal proceedings have been issued in the High Court and are expected to be served on each defendant during 2025. 23
Supermax
In December 2022, the Department of Health was forced to change how it assesses the risk profile of potential suppliers following a landmark legal case which challenged the government’s decision to include Malaysian glove manufacturer, Supermax, as an approved provider, despite long-standing claims of labour abuses at the company’s factories in Malaysia. 24 The case represented current and former workers who alleged debt bondage, physical abuse and forced labour while working at Supermax. 25
Boohoo Group PLC (Boohoo)
In 2020, an independent review into allegations of unacceptable working conditions in Leicester-based factories making clothes for Boohoo confirmed: serious health and safety violations; significant numbers of workers were paid below the national minimum or living wage; employees did not have proper contracts; and working hours were frequently excessive and inadequately remunerated. 26 A legal opinion to assess whether Boohoo could have been held liable under a new UK mandatory human rights and environmental due diligence law indicates that without Boohoo taking action to mitigate potential harms, it seems likely that liability would have been established as a result of a determination that the harms were directly linked to its products.27
Transition minerals/materials
The production of minerals such as lithium, graphite and cobalt could increase by nearly 500 per cent by 2050 to meet the growing demand for clean energy technologies.28 At present, evidence indicates a concerning trend in human rights violations and environmental harms linked to critical minerals and clean energy technology. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre Critical Minerals Tracker for 2024 shows a marked increase in labour rights violations and worker deaths, compared to previous years. This is alongside widespread violations of land and Indigenous Peoples’ rights, and environmental standards. IndustriALL global union highlights that the increasing demand for transition minerals will deeply affect the global workforce and risks further entrenching global inequalities.29 As much as 97 per cent of solar panels could contain materials made by persecuted Uyghur workers who are trapped in forced labour schemes. 30 The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) holds 60 per cent of the world’s cobalt supply, but many mines are unregulated - with the use of child labour and many miners working without basic health and safety equipment.31 The US Department of State has also expressed concern about the role that the illicit trade and exploitation of certain minerals from the African Great Lakes Region continues to play in financing the conflict in eastern DRC.32
Seasonal agricultural workers in the UK
The seasonal worker scheme, which offers people from overseas a six-month temporary visa, was introduced in 2019 to address labour shortages that were expected to be worsened by Brexit. It has expanded rapidly, from 2,500 visas in 2019 to 55,000 in 2024. The programme has been plagued by allegations of worker mistreatment. In March 2023, the media uncovered 33 systematic bullying and abuse on several UK farms.
Nineteen farm inspection reports produced by the Home Office between 2021 and 2022 revealed the scale of abuse faced by seasonal workers. The documents summarise interviews and findings of inspectors who visited farms.
Nearly half (44 per cent) of the 845 workers interviewed as part of the inspections raised welfare issues including racism, wage theft and threats of being sent back home. On most of the inspected farms, there were allegations of mistreatment or discrimination and more than 80 per cent of workers interviewed on the three most complained about farms raised an issue of some sort.
The findings also reveal unlawful recruitment fees are more common than previously thought, with workers from six countries saying they had paid recruiters as much as £7,500 for jobs in the UK. The charging of these fees is illegal in the UK.
Because of the former government’s inadequate approach, violations of human and labour rights in the global operations, services and products of UK companies persist.
The UK is lagging behind a number of countries that have or will introduce legislation to protect human rights in global value chains.
For example:
We believe there are many reasons for enacting legislation that promotes respect for human and labour rights and environmental standards, and which makes organisations legally accountable for preventing labour and human right impacts and environmental harms in their global value chains:
In keeping with international best practice, new legislation should cover:
A central pillar of mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation is a duty that commercial and other relevant organisations must undertake human rights and environmental due diligence to prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts.
The core components of a due diligence process are:
Based on our legal advice, the definition of organisations should go beyond commercial organisations and extend to public authorities or other organisations that have global value chains capable of giving rise to human rights impacts.
The UNGPs apply to all states and all businesses, both transnational and others, regardless of their size, sector, location, ownership and structure.45
The TUC has long argued for strong procurement conditionalities. This entails strengthening the statutory procurement framework to place proactive requirements on all suppliers to adhere to robust decent work, equalities, governance and responsible business practice standards, and public authorities to carry out due diligence to ensure workers’ rights are protected throughout value chains. It also means being clear that suppliers with a track record of bad employment practice will be unable to access public contracts, and that transparency and accountability will also be at the heart of all stages of procurement and contract management.
For SMEs, due diligence requirements should be proportionate to the size of the business and severity of its actual and potential human rights impacts, as well as its leverage over its suppliers. 46 Larger business enterprises should provide support to SMEs in their value chains to meet their due diligence obligations, and technical assistance could be provided by a regulator.
It would be feasible to establish a system of strict joint and several liability in the UK for key workers’ rights while enacting robust mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation in relation to global value chain responsibilities.
As stated, the TUC advocates for a system of strict, joint and several liability in UK domestic supply chains for core rights such as sick pay, holiday pay and the National Minimum Wage.
An organisations’ duties would extend to the whole of the value chain.
The duties in any mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation should extend to impacts of: (i) organisations’ domestic and international operations; (ii) including the operations of their subsidiaries and controlled undertakings; and (iii) including impacts arising from products and services in their value chains.
Mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation would apply to all workers in global value chains.
Mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation should provide that organisations will be liable for harm, loss and damage arising from failures to respect human rights or prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts of their domestic and international operations, products and services in their value chains.
Effective new legislation should contain a tripartite accountability regime, providing for civil liability, regulatory oversight and criminal liability.
Civil claims
Who can bring a claim?
Firstly, the right of interested persons, such as trade unions, to seek injunctive relief 47 in courts to order an organisation to comply with its duties under mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation, provided it has formally requested the organisation to comply and it has failed to do so within three months.
The claimant would have to establish they have been affected by an adverse human rights or environmental impact arising out of the organisations’ own operations (in the case of the duty to respect) or out of the operations of its subsidiaries or products and services in its value chain (in the case of the duty to prevent). Trade unions, independent workers’ associations and relevant stakeholders would have standing to make a civil claim on behalf of claimants, if the latter choose to pursue civil liability. Independent trade unions could also have standing to bring a case where rights relating to unions have been breached.
The burden would then shift to the organisation to establish a justification or that it had taken reasonable and appropriate measures to prevent the relevant impact.
Is there an employer defence under this legislation?
Compliance with due diligence obligations would be an important factor in determining whether organisations had complied with their duties to respect and prevent human rights impacts. A failure to have procedures in place and integrate due diligence into an organisation’s policies would impair an organisation’s ability to defend a claim. Identification of a risk or impact without sufficient further action could be detrimental to an organisation’s defence, as would an unreasonable failure to identify a risk or impact. However, taking effective and timely measures to prevent, mitigate and remediate impacts would significantly strengthen an organisation’s prospects.
Liability would depend on whether a court determines there has been a breach of the qualified duties to respect or prevent harm. The burden of proof would take the following approach, which is consistent with claims under the Human Rights Act and Equalities Act.
Regarding an organisation’s defence, the UN Guiding Principles and Third Revised Draft of the UN Binding Treaty on Business and Human Rights state that conducting due diligence will not automatically provide a defence. But, compliance with due diligence obligations would be an important factor in determining whether organisations had complied with their duties to respect and prevent human rights harms.
What is joint and several liability and can it work with a mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence system?
Joint and several liability could, in principle, attach to any duty where breaches involve multiple perpetrators. That could be a breach of obligations in mandatory labour and human rights and environmental due diligence legislation or otherwise. As mentioned, the civil liability model could be constructed to provide for injunctive relief and claims for damages. Where an individual establishes breach and causation in an individual claim for damages, there are good reasons why this should attract joint and several liability.
Regulatory oversight
The second component of the tripartite accountability regime should be robust regulatory oversight. Mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation should have a regulator fit for purpose and with the following powers:
Criminal liability
In addition to regulatory oversight, mandatory human and labour rights and environmental due diligence legislation could consider making organisations and their senior managers subject to criminal sanctions for violations of their duties to respect and prevent adverse human rights and environmental impacts where the impacts involve serious or “gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law constituting crimes under international law”.
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