The Circle of Women
The Circle NGO
The Circle brings together Global Feminists to use their resources, networks and creativity to cultivate long lasting change.
ID: 059012942439-85
Lobbying Activity
Response to Effectively banning products produced, extracted or harvested with forced labour
20 Jun 2022
The Circle welcomes the Commission's proposals for a new measure that would ban products tainted by the stain of forced labour from being sold in the EU and is pleased to contribute to the development of this legislation.
Our interest in this proposal stems from our legal expertise on mechanisms to secure living wages in global garment supply chains. The textile and garment sector is particularly high risk for forced labour practices, including those identified by ILO Conventions No. 29 and 105. However, within the specific context of global garment supply chains, it is often difficult to distinguish between forced labour, as defined by the ILO, and poverty wages.
Sexual and gender-based violence, abusive working conditions, forced overtime to meet production targets, coercive threats of violence, wage theft and poverty pay, are embedded within the industry’s supply chains and have proved incredibly difficult to eliminate through voluntary measures. Our partners and the female garment workers we support suffer the direct consequences of this abuse and it is a consistent feature of their reports. Within the context of pervasive labour abuses, working for poverty pay becomes very difficult to distinguish from forced labour. A lack of alternative work opportunities and nonexistent social security nets for garment workers mean workers cannot leave their roles despite abusive working conditions. In addition, association with trade union activities towards improving conditions is often penalised.
Therefore, although we welcome EU progress on the issue of forced labour, and predict this will have positive effects on the textile industry in particular, a narrow definition of forced labour will not be enough to ameliorate the labour conditions of garment workers. Nor will it meet the Commission's stated responsibility to improve labour conditions, reduce abuse faced by workers, and ultimately protect both consumers and business from products associated with unacceptable human rights abuses.
We would encourage the Commission to consider the close relationship between forced labour and other abusive labour practices and address these issues concurrently via a similar trade measure. We would point the Commission towards the mechanism outlined in our 2021 draft Regulation, “Fashion Focus – A Proposal for New EU Legislation on a Living Wage” (attached). The conclusions of our research to date align closely with the Commission’s forced labour proposal. Firstly, the legal basis of our draft Regulation closely correlates with the legal basis of the Commission’s forced labour proposal, resting on Articles 207 and 114 of the TFEU, the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, and UN Sustainable Development Goal 8. Secondly, our research supports the position that due diligence on enterprises alone is not enough to address serious abuses in global supply chains. Instead, it will be necessary for the EU to adopt trade measures that target goods associated with human rights abuses such as forced labour, despite potential conflicts with WTO, an issue we have also had to consider.
Therefore, The Circle welcomes EU leadership on the issue of forced and abusive labour practices in product supply chains and supports the development of a new legal instrument to end their presence on the Internal Market. We hope that the Commission can build upon this first step to address other pressing labour abuses that take place within global supply chains, specifically poverty pay in the textile and garment industry, and would welcome the opportunity to provide additional input to the upcoming discussions.
Read full response