Workers at a seafood processing factory in Can Tho province in Southern Viet Nam. ILO/Flickr. (CC 2.0 by-nc-nd)
In 2015, two years after the horrific Rana Plaza collapse, I visited Bangladesh on a labour rights exchange. The workers I met were still reeling from the accident. Despite international media attention, they were also still facing enormous barriers in their attempts to exercise their right to form unions, which they saw as key to their survival and the prevention of future tragedies. I have no doubt that the conversation at the International Labour Organisation (ILO) this month will revisit the Rana Plaza story in depth, and I trust that the worker groups attending the International Labour Conference (ILC) will bring many more examples of what happens when a profit-driven ‘race to the bottom’ leads to widespread failure to protect the health and safety of working people.
Beyond essential labour rights, I am hoping these ILC discussions will provoke rich, critical public dialogue about the myriad social, legal, and environmental consequences of globalisation. The ILO will look at it through the lens of decent work; in other civil society spaces, activists can also use the ILC topic to promote a lens of equity and democracy in trade deals, along with climate and environmental protection.
