Global investors appeal to Bangladeshi Prime Minister to allow Accord to complete its mandate until government is fully prepared to assume responsibility for garment factory workers’ safety.

This week labor activists and trade unionists around the world are expressing their solidarity with garment workers in Bangladesh through demonstrations in front of Bangladeshi embassies and consulates in cities around the world. Through this week of global solidarity action, activists, unionists and consumers are calling for living wages, safe factories, and a halt to repression against garment workers in Bangladesh.

On January 11, Fyffes signed an agreement recognizing STAS – el Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Agroindustria y Similares – as the legitimate union representative of workers employed at Fyffes’ melon subsidiaries in Honduras. Fyffes is an Irish multinational company owned by the Japanese conglomerate Sumitomo, and one of the largest fruit brands in the world and the top importer of winter-season melons to the U.S. market.

We, the undersigned civil society groups, strongly condemn the conviction of six prominent independent trade union leaders by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on December 11, 2018. 

Uzbekistan’s 2018 cotton harvest, which concluded in all regions of the country the first week of December, showcased the enormous challenges in uprooting the country’s deeply entrenched forced labor system. Driven by a commitment to reform at the highest levels of the government, there is a significant transition underway, which is reflected in some encouraging signs of progress.

On December 29, Thailand voted to ratify the International Labour Organization Convention on Work in Fishing (No. 188), a point that the International Labor Rights Form has campaigned for following the ILO’s adoption of the Convention in 2007. Thailand is the first Asian country to ratify the Convention. This Convention sets the bar that working conditions on Thai fishing vessels must meet and is an important step towards eliminating labor abuses in the supply chains of international brands sourcing seafood from Thailand.

Indonesian palm oil giant Indofood has been sanctioned by the world’s largest palm oil certification scheme, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) reported.

Research findings published today reveal that many workers making H&M’s clothes live below the poverty line -- despite H&M’s promise of a living wage by 2018, and despite the brand’s recent deceptive claims of progress. Interviewed workers in India and Turkey earn about a third and in Cambodia less than one-half of the estimated living wage. In Bulgaria interviewed workers’ salary at H&M’s “gold supplier” is not even 10 per cent of what would be required for workers and their families to have decent lives.