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February 14, 2019

Report: Social Audits Don’t Detect Abuse of Women Workers In Garment Factories

The assertion from Human Rights Watch could be important for promo companies that source and/or buy apparel made overseas.

By  Christopher Ruvo

A new report from Human Rights Watch (HRW) says that social audits that apparel brands often rely on to help monitor conditions at factories in their supply chains fail to detect or deter gender-based violence and harassment against female laborers, which comprise a majority of the workforce.

The news could carry importance for promotional products firms that utilize social audits, which are mainly based on document reviews and on-site interviews, to help ensure that working conditions are humane in the factories from which they source.

A New York-based international nongovernmental organization, HRW said that it reviewed 50 social audit reports of factories in countries that include Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, the third county’s factories being the subject of a separate recent HRW report on alleged labor abuse. The results were not encouraging, HRW said.

“We found that social audits…are not designed to elicit information about gender-based violence or harassment at work,” the organization said in a report summary. “They are not designed to overcome the specific barriers to reporting such harassment. They do not sufficiently create a safe space for workers who experience such harassment or guarantee anti-retaliation. Apparel companies that use social audits should know their limitations, and shouldn’t pretend they are the right tool for this job.”

HRW’s assertions on the alleged inefficacy of social audits came as the organization this week called on apparel companies to do more to combat violence, discrimination and harassment in garment factories.

The outcry was timed to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Forum on Due Diligence in the Garment and Footwear Sector, which started Wednesday. The forum will feature more than 400 representatives from governments, the apparel industry, unions, and civil society.

“Human Rights Watch calls on global apparel companies to show leadership in confronting (gender-based issues like sexual harassment, pregnancy discrimination and more) by publicly supporting the call for a new binding International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention on violence and harassment at work,” wrote attorney Aruna Kashyap for HRW. “There is a desperate need for a binding convention because 59 countries do not even have any specific legal remedies against sexual harassment at work. Even where legal remedies exist, they are often poorly enforced – like in India and Pakistan.”

In researching the issue, HRW says it came across harrowing examples of abuse, some of which it documented here. For example, there is the story of Roja, a married garment worker in India who said her supervisor stalked her, repeatedly calling her cell phone after work hours to ask for sexual favors and promising to give her less work and more time off if she responded to his advances.

“When she complained to the factory’s administration, they said that he was a supervisor who had high productivity and told her such harassment was ‘normal’ and that she needed to take it in stride,” HRW reported.

Meanwhile, in Cambodia, women workers told HRW they were subjected to sexual comments and advances, pinching, and other unwanted bodily contact from male managers and co-workers. Some said factory managers invited them to attend karaoke parties and to consume alcohol – invitations they found difficult to refuse because of the power the men hold.

HRW said that verbal abuse, much of it gender-driven – “whore,” “bitch,” “prostitute” – is common in garment factories across countries.

In its report, HRW said that global apparel and footwear brands should do the following to help combat abuse of female workers:

  • Publicly support the drive towards a binding ILO convention to tackle violence and harassment at work.
  • Publish the company’s global factory lists in accordance with the Transparency Pledge.
  • Design brand-level grievance redress mechanisms with the participation of workers, unions, and labor advocates, ensuring that these mechanisms are also equipped to tackle sexual harassment at work.
  • Carry out periodic studies to examine gender-based violence and harassment at work in every production country. Ensure that women workers, unions, and local women’s rights groups with experience in tackling workplace harassment are actively involved in designing the studies and are able to provide information safely.
  • Brands should ask and map out as part of sourcing and compliance information, whether the factory they are placing orders with has sister companies owned by the same parent company. This would go a long way to help detect retaliation against workers.
  • Take steps to examine and redress brands’ purchasing practices to prevent and mitigate risks of abusive practices in the supply chain. In particular, examine all practices that reduce a factory’s time available for bulk production. These include brand approvals for materials and samples, producing technical packs for designs on time, and tracking the difference between projected and actual orders.