Header Photo Credit: Mikael Blomkvist _Pexels

Key Points:

  • Companies use grievance mechanisms and assessments, including social audits, as two pillars of a monitoring strategy. The most effective monitoring systems work closely with workers and their unions to implement and maintain grievance mechanisms and negotiate solutions to identified problems.
    • Grievance mechanism: An established, transparent system that aims for resolution of conflict by an institutionalized mechanism that outlines the process for how a grievance is handled and the responsibilities of each party throughout the process. Effective grievance mechanisms are confidential and secure, which can alleviate workers’ fear of reprisal from employers. It is critical that workers, especially those without the protection of an effective union and bargaining agreement, have whistleblower protections that enable them to safely report serious concerns to management. Effective grievance mechanisms can lead to cessation of labor rights abuses and remediation for past harm.
    • Social audit: The process of examining a specific worksite’s compliance with laws and the standards set in the company’s Code of Conduct. Auditing helps uncover problems; it does not solve problems. It is one piece of the larger labor due diligence system. 
       
  • Effective grievance mechanisms should be legitimate, accessible, predictable, transparent, rights-compatible, a source of continuous learnings, and based on dialogue and engagement.
  • Grievance mechanisms must provide some means of timely dispute remediation or settlement.
  • Social auditing is a useful tool to assess compliance at a particular point in time and should not be used as the only process for determining the prevalence of exploitative labor in a supply chain. Audits should be tailored to a code of conduct and the local context. They must also specifically focus on labor rights and be used with the intention of remediating identified issues.

Key Topics

Examples in Action