Conference Agenda

Introduction

This article intends to analyze the Brazilian New Procurement Law, published in 2021, and its applicability to fight modern slavery and to promote decent work. The study focuses on the efficiency of the new law in prohibiting those condemned for modern slavery from contracting with public institutions. The goal is to make a critical analysis, identifying the probable gaps in the public policy, presenting some possible solutions to guarantee the efficiency of the prohibition. The law has been published during the COVID-19 crisis which increased unemployment and the number of people living under the line of poverty. This situation surely led to the increasing of workers submitted to modern slavery in Brazil. In 2021, 1.959 workers were found and freed from slavery-like working conditions in Brazil, the highest number since 2013.

Research questions

The study pretends to seek the answers to some of the following questions: how potentially efficient can the prohibition imposed by the procurement law, based on the chosen parameters and the time of the judicial and public procurement? What are the possible gaps and solutions to make sure public money won´t be destined for people and companies that submit workers to modern slavery?

Methodology

The study used the oficial datas and numbers provided by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security and the Labor Prosecution Office. The purpose was to analyze the inspection procedures that identified slave labor between 2019 and 2021 and to determine how many of those Labor inspectorate documents culminated in conduct adjustment agreements within the Labor prosecution. We sought to evaluate whether a significant percentage of these agreements would indeed be positive, since, in this way, even when companies expressly recognize the existence of slavery conditions, they can still be part of public procurement, once the law requires a judicial sentence to prohibit their participation. We also analyzed the number of civil actions filed by Labor prosecutors between 2019 and 2021, in order to seek if the convictions in such cases have had the effect intended by law.

Contribution to literature and findings

Analyzing the parameters used by the Labor Inspectorate and the Judiciary system to identify cases of slavery and how the public Procurement new Law uses them to apply its prohibition is key to understanding the effectiveness of this public policy. It is urgent to prevent the public treasury could be used by human rights exploiters.

Introduction: Following reports of forced labour and widespread labour abuses in the Malaysian rubber glove industry during the Covid-19 crisis, over the past three years the U.S. Customs and Border Protection has issued five import bans on various of Malaysia’s world-leading glove manufacturers. There is however limited evidence on the effectiveness of import bans in addressing forced labour and/or labour rights abuses in global supply chains, with very little research existing on this emerging topic.

Our study asked: What are the consequences of the U.S. forced labour import bans on the working conditions of glove workers in Malaysia? Can import bans be an effective tool for addressing forced labour and/or labour rights abuses in global supply chains?

Methodology: To answer these questions we followed the media content analysis approach developed by Altheide and Schneider (2013) and Patterson et al (2016). A total of 76 quality news articles from countries including the UK, U.S. and Malaysia were collected and analysed between September 2022 and January 2023. Findings were triangulated to enhance validity and reliability.

Contribution and Findings: The U.S. import bans are having intended and unintended consequences able to positively influence debt-bondage remediation and the working and living conditions of glove workers in Malaysia in the short-term, but more research is needed to fully understand the exact short and long-term impacts on workers, on the business models of producers and suppliers, and on Malaysia’s labour governance. Several factors influence the effectiveness of forced labour import bans, such as the market share they affect, and more research is needed to fully understand the precise pathways of impact. Decent work drivers are however complex and multifaceted, and any single regulatory intervention is unlikely, on its own, to effectively eliminate forced labour or strengthen labour standards in a sustainable way. Whilst the recent U.S. import bans have encouraged rubber glove companies and the Malaysian government to temporarily take steps to improve labour standards as strategy to protect exports, achieving long-term decent work in global supply chains requires coordinated multi-country regulatory action. In the Malaysian rubber glove sector this involves, among other, complementing purchasing countries’ import ban regulation with meaningful ethical procurement and supply chain due diligence legislation and enforcement, adequate labour and migrant-worker legislation and enforcement in Malaysia, and effective regulation of the recruitment industry in migrant-worker sending countries.

Introduction: In the last decades the standing of placement firms in enlisting workers for many employment sectors has strengthened significantly. Despite the ascension of placement firms, however, there is a lacuna in the legal and sociological writing that deals with them in general, and with the division of responsibility for preventing discrimination against candidates in acceptance to work.

Purpose: This study focused on an issue that has hardly been researched to date: discrimination processes applying to socially diverse job candidates based on a third factor—placement agencies. Our aim was twofold: to expose the existence of discrimination mechanisms in placement processes by means of placement agencies, and to examine which legal tools can contend with these discrimination mechanisms.

Design: This study combines empirical-qualitative research with an examination of the legal tools can contend with these discrimination mechanisms. Due to the complexity and elusiveness of proving discrimination in hiring processes, we conducted semi-structured in -depth interviews with 25 recruitment managers in business organizations that use the services of placement agencies, and 25 recruiters in placement agencies. The interviews were conducted in a face-to-face meeting with interviewees in their workplaces. Each interview lasted 60-90 minutes. All the interviews were recorded and transcribed. The interviews were analysed using the anchored in field theory method, by means of a cyclical process of identifying content categories and interpreting the relations between the various categories arising from the data.

Findings: Business organizations and placement agencies maintain direct and indirect discrimination mechanisms that harm the placement chances of vulnerable social groups. In addition, there is a significant gap between the severity of the phenomenon and the legal and judicial relief that currently exists for contending with these discrimination mechanisms.

Contribution: This study observes in depth a disturbing phenomenon in the labour market which hasn’t yet been discussed at sufficient length - discrimination mechanisms of socially diverse jobseekers in hiring processes. We suggest possible reliefs for the purpose of constraining discrimination in hiring and its cumulative damage. While our recommendations cannot entirely prevent discrimination, they have the potential to implant more equitable work norms among both organizations and placement agencies, and thereby to change procedures and mutual working methods, as well as deter the use of indirect discrimination mechanisms.

This paper explores institutional experiments to protect work and employment standards in the UK as the country’s employment relations system is grappling with the implications of buyer-driven value chains. Against the context of a decline in collective bargaining, a complex web of labour market enforcement institutions has developed over the last decades, tasked with monitoring and enforcing aspects from the minimum wage, health and safety, to modern slavery. As public agencies’ enforcement capacities and resources remained low, and as social auditors developed a new market in the supply chains of the Global North, the UK’s Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority (GLAA) led public-private protocols (PPPs) in the food, construction, and textile sectors in order to support more effective prevention activities.

This paper focuses on the range of activities in one of these PPPs, the Apparel and General Merchandise public-private protocol (AGM-PPP) which comprised about 80 industry stakeholders before it was wound up earlier this year. Despite its ending, the AGM-PPP offered an important platform to discuss and develop novel elements of labour market regulation, from the proliferation of a robust social auditing methodology, to binding joint liability agreements (between fashion brands and manufacturers), or the establishment of a Garment Trade Adjudicator. All of these initiatives, even if not all of them were implemented, mark stark shifts in the way UK employment relations are regulated in value chains and underscore the rise of (mandatory) human rights due diligence.

The paper explores the effectiveness of different forms of labour market enforcement through two steps. On the one hand, the approaches of public agencies that were combined in the AGM-PPP are compared and evaluated against each other. On the other hand, these approaches are contrasted against data from factory audits that were conducted under a robust social auditing methodology. This allows to a) highlight the shifts amongst multiple auditing standards and enforcement practices across different private and public actors; b) show how private actors often have superior capacity and authority when it comes to monitoring working conditions, auditing suppliers, and enforcing standards; c) evidence the inefficiency of current labour market enforcement governance through the data gaps that emerge across private and public actors’ monitoring and auditing.

The conclusion explores the implications of the AGM-PPPs end for a labour-driven model of labour market enforcement.

The cattle industry employs the most modern slave laborers in Brazil, and Pará is home to the highest concentration of such workers. My study examined the public initiatives (dirty lists and the crime of reduction to a condition analogous to slavery) and supply chain initiatives (Greenpeace and the Federal Prosecutors) to combat modern slave labor in the cattle sector in Pará. The literature argues that there are gaps in how initiatives like these work in practice. My overarching research question is: are public and supply chain initiatives contradictory, substitutive, or complementary? To answer this question, we employed the qualitative process tracing method in my research. We examined forty Ministry of Labor inspection reports, categorized who was dirty listed, and compiled the offenses committed by those cattle ranchers. The cattle rancher is prosecuted in criminal court and may be sentenced to between 2 and 8 years in prison after being dirty-listed. We investigated whether those on the dirty list were acquitted or convicted and on what grounds. To investigate the process and practice of the supply chain initiatives, we read the Socio-Environmental Auditing reports of the slaughterhouses that signed the supply chain initiatives.

We found that the dirty list publication was suspended between 2014 and 2016 due to pressure of some parties of society, and the offenses practiced by those dirty listed primarily violated worker dignity. However, there is no consensus among criminal court judges regarding what constitutes a violation of dignity. Some judges interpreted the cattle rancher's failure to provide the worker with basic needs (e.g. restroom and potable water) as a violation of dignity. Conversely, acquittal decisions held that there is no violation because, on a daily basis, workers do not have access to potable water, beds, or bathrooms in their homes.

Greenpeace's supply chain initiative aims to prevent the four largest slaughterhouses in Brazil from purchasing cattle from dirty-listed ranchers. The Federal Prosecutor supply chain initiative prohibits signatory slaughterhouses from purchasing cattle from ranchers who are on the dirty list and from those who are facing legal action for engaging in modern-day slavery. Consequently, supply chain initiatives rely on public initiatives.

Overall, the initiatives studied complement one another; however, complementation is weakened due to supply chain initiatives' high reliance on (unstable) public initiatives. As a result, traditional law enforcement mechanisms should be strengthened, reinforcing new labor law enforcement strategies, such as supply chain initiatives.