Conference Agenda

In 2022, the United Nations General Assembly declared a healthy environment, and access to clean air, a human right (CCAC secretariat, 2022). However, such rights remain unrealised in the global garment industry, wherein workers are routinely exposed to air pollution. In Cambodia, factory boilers are fuelled by wood and garment off-cuts (Geres, 2022; Parsons et al., 2021), the burning of which releases particulate matter, nitrous oxide and sulphur dioxide into the air (Chandath et al., 2023). Boundless in nature, this polluted air affects the quality of outdoor and indoor environments for workers at assembly lines, where they work up to 8 or 10 hours a day (Parsons et al., 2022:28). The environmental effects of this model are grave, with recent research noting the high levels of particulate matter and toxins detected at factory sites, exceeding World Health Organisation guidelines for the protection of human health (Chandath et al., 2023). Although there is little awareness of air pollution and its effects on workers, research evidences the high prevalence of exposure symptoms amongst garment workers at such factories using biomass boilers (Chandath et al., 2023). Crucially, the health impacts of air pollution are uneven, given young migrant women's over-representation in such roles (Lawreniuk et al., 2022). This paper examines the health effects of exposure to air pollution on garment workers’ respiratory health, to address a dearth of gendered data on women's health in the garment industry. Using arts-based methods, this paper employs a participatory, worker-led approach, that foregrounds embodied experiences of ill–health. In doing so, it highlights how exposure to air pollutants constitutes a form of invisible, ‘slow violence’ (Nixon, 2011), undermining the right to a safe work environment – a pillar of the ‘Decent Work’ agenda. Accretive in nature, the latency of chronic respiratory conditions, can result in years of ill-health without diagnosis, as witnessed with cases of Brown and Black Lung in the past (Blanc, 2012; Smith, 1981). The findings of this research suggest that increased awareness and capacity to communicate such experiences are crucial to initiate social dialogue and policy implications around air pollution; a necessary step for the attainment of Sustainable Development Goals 3, 5, & 8 on ‘Health and Wellbeing’, ‘Gender Equality’ and ‘Decent Work’. Enhancing understanding on air pollution and its effect on women workers’ health will therefore prove fruitful in ensuring garment workers’ right to dignified employment, and more critically, their right to clean air.

The problem of decent work among workers in global supply chains, such as the garment sector, is well-documented. The debate revolves around what mechanisms can respond to decent work deficits. The disruptions in global supply chains created by the pandemic and its impact on working conditions reaffirmed the relevance of resolving the question of effective regulation. The research examined the COVID-related discrimination suffered by low-waged, mostly women, garment workers in three factories at the Mactan Export Processing Zone (MEPZ) in Cebu, Philippines that manufacture for global brands. Utilizing focus group discussions and key informant interviews and using the lens of equality and non-discrimination, the research revealed that workers suffered from thirteen types of COVID-related discrimination. Among these are pregnancy, health status, freedom of association, harassment by state authorities, harassment by company management and theft of workers’ benefits. The number and kinds of discrimination that were uncovered suggests that abuses were widespread and severe during the pandemic. This highlights the disconnect between law and practice in the Philippines regarding labour standards and anti-discrimination rules. Likewise, this spotlights the deficits in voluntary regulation of global supply chains based on brand codes of conduct. The pandemic experiences of garment workers in the MEPZ bare the limits of self-regulation by global brands and local suppliers but also state regulation and reforms to ensure labor compliance. The study proposes a stylized typology of regulation of global supply chains: private regulation or corporate social responsibility (CSR); public regulation or business and human rights (BHR); and social regulation or worker-driven social responsibility (WSR). The paper argues that unions and their allies exercising leverage to compel brands to forge binding agreements or WSR is a more promising means of regulating global supply chains. Finally, the study recommends a set of specific steps to remediate the discrimination endured by garment workers in MEPZ.

Global supply chains underpin a multitude of labor violations, environmental disasters, and human rights abuses. The pursuit of justice is not just difficult—it is essential. The complexity of these chains, coupled with the discrepancies in legal systems, makes accountability a pressing issue that must be addressed. Access to remedies is critical but often challenging in developing countries like sub-Saharan Africa, where judicial systems are costly and slow, coupled with a highly informal workforce. Informal workers, essential to global supply chains in agriculture and mining, lack the legal protections necessary for decent working conditions. This puts them at risk of human rights violations, including unsafe environments and limited grievances. Human rights protections in global supply chains are severely compromised and require urgent attention.

Non-judicial grievance mechanisms (NJGMs), established by the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011), offer a beacon of hope by enabling victims of human rights violations resulting from business activities, including informal workers, to address grievances and enhance their rights and working conditions within supply chains. Additionally, emerging due diligence laws, such as the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) and the German Due Diligence Act, provide further opportunities to improve the rights of informal workers in global supply chains. These frameworks can tackle issues like inadequate wages and unsafe working conditions by enforcing due diligence and ensuring access to remedies.

NJGMs can support informal workers in addressing rights violations and holding corporations accountable for labor abuses in their supply chains. By fostering dialogue and collaboration among worker organizations, trade unions, and businesses, they build trust and create sustainable solutions, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where legal systems can be costly.

The success of the NJGMS relies on effective implementation, enforcement, and stakeholder collaboration. This article explores NJGMs' potential to address challenges informal workers face, such as limited literacy, fear of retaliation, and gender disparities while emphasizing accessibility, transparency, and worker participation. Human rights violations will only persist because of exclusions of the most vulnerable from protection. For example, informal workers are often excluded from human rights policies and agendas, further perpetuating their vulnerability. This exclusion can only be stopped by inclusive justice systems and offer remedies to violations, especially in regions where informal arrangements are the norm.

Research Question: What role can non-judicial grievance mechanisms play in promoting the rights of informal workers in Sub-Saharan Africa’s global supply chains?

Methodology

Qualitative approach.

Introduction

The right to a living wage is an internationally recognized human right (Article 23 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 7 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights). The ILO does not (yet) recognize this right as a fundamental right at work, but the ILO plays a leading role in defining and calculating living wages. Whereas most international instruments have focused on the obligations of states to enforce a living wage, more recent ones, like the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and the recent EU Corporate Sustainable Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) at the EU level are increasingly placing responsibilities and legal obligations on multinational enterprises to respect the right to a living wage in their supply chains. This piece aims at explaining how large businesses must conduct due diligence with respect to a living wage and a living income in their value chains. It analyses the potential and shortcomings of the living wage provisions of the CSDDD for low income countries in particular.

Research Question

What are the new legal obligations of large enterprises to respect the right to a living wage in their global value chains in mandatory due diligence legislation? How will these obligations be enforced in theory and in practice? Particularly, how to ensure respect for a right to a living income of informal workers in supply chains?

Methodology

Methodologically, this contribution explains the scope and enforcement mechanisms of emerging legal due diligence obligations regarding the right to a living wage. If focuses on the German due diligence supply chain law and the EU CSDDD in particular. Based on best practices by companies already guaranteeing a living wage in their supply chains, it anticipates potential and practical shortcomings of this new legislation and proposes avenue to ensure a proper transposition by European member states.

Contribution to literature and finding

This piece contributes to the literature on transnational labour law and business and human rights. So far, this literature has discussed due diligence mechanisms in generally, sometimes on labour rights more particularly, but not yet specifically on the right to a living wage. This piece also aims to contribute to the elaboration of a Guide on Living Wage and Living Income Due Diligence.

In her final speech at the ILC session adopting the 2022 amendment to the 1998 Declaration, the Workers’ Group chairperson expressed her hope that the right to a living wage ‘should receive the high priority it deserves, and – who knows – we may see a sixth fundamental right appearing on the horizon’ (Passchier 2022:9). Since then, the issue of living wage has garnered increased attention in the ILO’s system ( ILO 2024).

In our previous research on the 2022 amendment to the 1998 Declaration, we found that the 2022 amendment signals a lowering of the inclusion bar for future amendments of the Declaration beyond ‘procedural’ rights and opened the path for further updating of the list of FPRW (Katsaroumpas and Kotsoni, 2025). Building on our previous findings, with this article we will make the case for the inclusion of a right to a living wage in the 1998 Declaration.

Toward this end, the article advances the following arguments. Firstly, the 2022 amendment showed that not only ‘procedural’ or ‘autonomy rights’ belong to the 1998 Declaration, as previously thought (see Langille 2005 and Maupain 2005). In fact, the inclusion of health and safety as the fifth fundamental right renders these accounts obsolete and inadequate to capture the current evolution of the Declaration. Secondly, like the other FPRW, the right to a living wage has constitutional grounding that justifies its inclusion in the FPRW. In this article, we make the case for the inclusion of a right to a living wage in the 1998 Declaration. We locate this right within ILO’s constitutional framework and other significant legal sources, that demonstrate its constitutional grounding and distributive function, aligning with the Philadelphia Declaration's call for a just share of progress (see Ewing and Hendy, 2023). Thirdly, we argue that the inclusion of a right to a living wage in the Declaration is also supported by normative, rights-based, reasons, as well as the right’s links and enabling outcomes for other constitutional goals of the ILO.

Overall, recent developments regarding health and safety at work, suggest that ILO is equipped with experience and institutional capacity to expand the 1998 Declaration in that direction. The article will contribute to the debate on the possible inclusion of a living wage right in the 1998 Declaration by offering a constitutional normative narrative that views it as a normative and logical extension enabled and facilitated by the 2022 amendment.