What Qatar chose is a system where a worker is owned by his employer. When your employer forces you to live in squalor, makes you work longest hours in extreme heat, doesn't allow you to change jobs, doesn't pay your wages on time, abuses you physically and psychologically, you have no way out, you can't leave. You are trapped.
When corporations refuse to practice due diligence by not establishing grievance mechanisms for remedy of abuses against the hidden 94% of their workforce in their global supply chains, they perpetuate a depraved model of profit-making that has driven inequality to a level now seen as a global risk in itself.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the responsibility of corporations to address worker grievances in their supply chains to prevent inequality.
Sharan Burrow's quote emphasizes the critical role that corporations play in ensuring fairness and accountability within their global supply chains. By neglecting to set up proper grievance mechanisms for the vast majority of their workforce, companies not only fail to uphold ethical standards but also contribute to systemic inequality, which poses risks not just to individuals but to society as a whole. This highlights the broader implications of corporate practices on global welfare and stability.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a corporate social responsibility seminar, one might use this quote to stress the importance of ethical practices in supply chains.
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