IV. Suppliers’ transformative capacity & brand leverage

Brands and suppliers have an important role to play in transforming the industry by working with labor stakeholders. They must lead by example to support and promote effective initiatives that prioritize the voice of labor, build local capacity to positively transform workplace culture, and in doing so create meaningful and sustainable change locally and globally in garment supply chains.

A. Building local capacity and facilitating sustainable organizational transformation

Building and transforming the local capacity of the workers, trade union, and management to handle GBVH must be a priority, so that efficient, cost-effective, sustainable, and long-term organizational and industrial practices as well as a culture shift take root. By building local capacity, efforts to address GBVH become more sustainable over time. Rather than relying on external support or intervention, local actors are better equipped to take ownership of solving workplace issues, driving change from within, and avoiding additional costly architecture. Supporting local capacity to address GBVH also leads to a long-term culture shift in management, having broader implications for tackling deeply ingrained social attitudes.

The Dindigul Agreement builds local capacity through regular trainings on multiple relevant topics for all workers, supervisors, and managers, including diverse contractors and service providers, as well as the IC members. It also creates systems that enable workers, the union, and management to co-create real solutions through regular remediation meetings between the union and management and redressal of grievances by union and management prior to escalation. Sustainable organizational transformation is promoted in the shared principles of developing a culture of mutual respect and through the joint unionmanagement public ceremony announcing the agreement on all floors of all workplace facilities to all workers and management, signaling institutionalized acceptance of the Agreement and the anti-GBVH program at Eastman Exports.

B. Brands must use their leverage to create violencefree workplaces

Suppliers operate on thin profit margins and are highly dependent on maintaining business relationships with brands. Brands wield immense market power and suppliers face the constant threat of being outcompeted by another supplier with lower costs and so on. At the same time, brands face pressure from consumers or other stakeholders to ensure their supply chains are ethical and socially responsible and may sever business relationships over concerns of GBVH, forced labor, and other violations. Severing ties without responsible interventions that also prioritize the voice of labor is particularly devastating for workers who have few alternative job opportunities. At the same time, such practices incentivize suppliers to suppress workers from reporting GBVH as factories with more reports appear to be more of a liability than factories with fewer. As noted above, zero grievances may be a signal of high repression and lack of transparency.

Brands do have a responsibility to ensure that their supply chains are ethical and socially responsible and must work with suppliers and labor representatives to address any issues or challenges that arise, rather than cutting ties. Effective and inclusive frameworks must recognize the incentives suppliers have to suppress reporting and neglect behaviors that escalate into severe and aggressive forms of GBVH, and brands must constructively leverage their power to incentivize effective monitoring, reporting, and remediation to create GBVH-free workplaces.

The Dindigul Agreement sets a precedent in Asia for brands using their leverage to create violence-free workplaces and fulfill their obligations to human rights due diligence as enshrined by due diligence laws and frameworks. While the TTCU-Eastman Exports agreement lays out the anti-GBVH program and its implementation at the factory level, crucially, it is backed and reinforced by the Brand-Labor Stakeholder agreement, lending significant weight to the program’s credibility and the union’s authority to implement it. It also requires brand representatives to sit on the Oversight Committee, underscoring the importance of brand involvement in oversight of the Agreement. Finally, at the crux of ensuring compliance, the Brand-Labor Stakeholder agreement contains brands’ enforceable commitment to using financial incentives and commercial leverage with the supplier to facilitate cooperation.