Center for Business and Human Rights – Corporate Accountability

Recommend that the Center will publish a weeklong, independent audit of major supplier facilities with open data on worker safety, production capacity, and remediation timelines. there will be a clear источник of accountability that brands like levi can use to set deadlines and track progress, and this favor toward transparency will encourage the biggest players to act promptly, and this can also pave the way for continuous improvement.

The audit should cover production hubs across key city clusters across the world and beyond to reflect reality. Each site will report on safety controls, overtime, and wage compliance, with data cross-checked by independent teams. A detailed línea of evidence will link each facility to its parent brand and contract terms, and the источник will be publicly accessible so civil society there can verify claims.

Based on these findings, brands like levi should commit to quarterly public disclosures and to reopen facilities only after meeting safety benchmarks. The plan must identify the third-most at-risk regions and allocate remediation funds accordingly, increasing the capacity of audited facilities and reducing bottlenecks that hurt workers. If teams didnt meet targets, remediation timelines reset and progress becomes a public renegotiation. A dashboard will show progress: hours worked, incident rates, and remediation milestones, with updates every week in march and then quarterly thereafter.

este framework offers a practical path for corporate accountability that unions and workers can trust. Solo actions by any single brand are insufficient; governments and buyers should tie procurement to verified improvements, and civil society can use the public record to press for timely actions. The Center maintains an ongoing dialogue with workers to keep metrics relevant and enforceable.

Timeline of Corporate Accountability at the Center for Business and Human Rights

Recommended: implement four core strategies immediately: report, monitor, remediate, retain. Publish a monthly progress report starting in march, with june milestones to monitor momentum. The portal includes a botón for quick access to the latest data and a toggle for español content, because desea clear, inclusive communication with buyers, exports, and other stakeholders strengthens accountability. If you havent already aligned governance with the president, initiate that alignment now and retain oversight to ensure follow-through. The timeline tracks thousands of workers in vietnam and thousands of jobs tied to supply chains, and it highlights cancellations and areas with limited control that require targeted remedies. This approach also shows how those strategies translate into concrete improvements for communities and businesses. como desea, the framework remains adaptable to local conditions and stakeholder feedback.

These steps create a transparent loop: report outcomes, monitor implementation, remediate gaps, and retain governance momentum. The four milestones align with ongoing dialogue among buyers, factories, and civil society, ensuring that the biggest risks receive timely attention. When the president endorses the plan, the center can scale to additional markets and more sectors, sustaining momentum and driving real improvements on the ground.

Scope and Definitions: What counts as corporate accountability in BHR?

Adopt a precise scope that covers direct operations, core suppliers, and significant business partners across borders, with binding due diligence, remedy, and public disclosure obligations that are independently verified.

This artículo defines terms, criteria, and indicators to implement accountability in BHR and to turn policy into measurable actions.

• Direct operations and workforce: facilities, production sites, safety measures, fair wages, reasonable working hours, and protections against child and forced labor.
• Upstream and downstream parties: map the full chain (upstream and downstream) and require risk management for tier-1 and deeper suppliers, subcontractors, and logistics partners.
• Cross-border flows and exports: monitor sourcing, trade flows, and shipments; apply due diligence to global trade and ensure responsible handling of products and information across borders.
• Remedy and grievance: establish accessible channels for workers and communities; ensure timely investigations and remediation with clear timelines and restitution where appropriate.
• Transparency and verification: publish data on risk assessments, audits, and remedy outcomes; disclose in public reports by june and ensure independent verification with disaggregated data by region and supplier tier.

there is no room for vagueness; if a partner lost track of labor conditions, remediation begins immediately and contracts are adjusted or terminated where warranted. they could make excuses, but accountability requires action.

They added new data fields to capture worker outcomes, and they added training for suppliers to raise standards across the board.

1. Governance and policy alignment: establish board oversight and clear executive accountability for BHR outcomes; align procurement and performance reviews with remediation and disclosure requirements.
2. Supply chain mapping and risk prioritization: identify the biggest risks, including the third-most exposed regions, and comprehensively map suppliers, sites, and logistics to guide targeted due diligence.
3. Due diligence cadence and data collection (tiempo): implement a tiempo-based schedule with annual updates, mid-year checks, and weeklong on-site audits for high-risk sites; collect wages, hours, safety incidents, and worker voice indicators.
4. Remedy and grievance handling: provide accessible channels, confirm timely investigations, and implement remediation plans with measurable completion dates.
5. Disclosure and independent verification: publish verifiable data, obtain external assurance, and incorporate intelligence from trusted third parties to improve accuracy and credibility.
6. Resilience in crisis contexts: plan for pandemics and other shocks; ensure continuity of remedies and safe reopening of facilities, so there is no lapse in protections for workers and communities.

Across worlds operations, clear accountability reduces the toll of harms and supports sustainable growth in global markets. This approach favors transparency, strengthens trust with workers, and helps navigate exports responsibly in a complex, interconnected economy.

Roles and Responsibilities: Which actors are accountable and to whom?

Adopt a four-tier accountability framework with explicit reporting lines: the board, the CEO, operations leaders, and independent auditors, each answering to defined stakeholders.

Many actors operate across markets and must share control over risk and rights. The board oversees strategy, policies, and risk management, ensuring respect for human rights across four worlds and every market. The CEO reports to the board, while executives manage day-to-day controls and the integrity of the supply chain. Operations managers implement supplier audits, site protections, and worker grievance mechanisms, and they report to the CEO. Independent auditors verify the effectiveness of controls and report to regulators and investors. This mapping helps avoid lost revenue, clarifies accountability, and creates a chain of responsibility when issues arise. Some sites havent fully implemented the remedy, which means follow-up work remains in scope.

To implement, codify roles in governance docs, publish an annual accountability report, and tie incentives to measurable results. In a 35bn revenue market, the biggest risk sits with supplier operators; therefore, require direct reporting lines to the chief compliance officer, not only to procurement. After june findings, the firm reopened supplier audits, tightened contracts, and expanded remediation. We wrote that changes would take time, and didnt meet every target at first; now we have a clearer path and a plan to close gaps.

For multilingual contexts, guidance should be available in idioma as needed; include como instructions and ensure dhaka facilities and european plants align with a shared standard. The solo operator at a dhaka site can report directly to the ethics lead; this reduces delays. In june, a report noted gaps and the organization promised to act; after that, they reopened audits and started new training, with progress measured in monthly updates. That approach could help walk the talk and build trust with workers and communities.

Due Diligence to Remediation: A step-by-step practical workflow

Establish remediation end-state with 90-day increments, anchor it to center accountability, and publish progress against concrete metrics to buyers and stakeholders. Build a set of strategies that connect corrective actions to supplier contracts, worker safety, and product quality. Future planning starts with este framework and solo milestones that fashion teams across the industry can track.

Step 1: Define scope and data collection. Compile a complete supplier roster, flag facilities by risk, gather audits, corrective action plans, grievance logs, and worker interviews. Establish a single standard for closure verification and ensure the center has access to all records, creating everything as a verifiable trail.

Step 2: Engage with facilities and workers to validate problems and co-create remediation with enforceable actions, owners, and due dates. In bangladesh, the industry sought fixes; akter-led teams drove the process, and managers said they would commit to clear timelines. Some sites havent closed all gaps yet, but this este approach used an artículo template to report progress to the center and to stakeholders, como observers noted.

Step 3: Build a trackable remediation plan: assign owners, set due dates, and define verification methods (on-site checks, independent audits, worker feedback). Use a concise artículo to document actions, solo keep records accessible to center leadership and supplier teams; navegando through the workflow with monthly validations, and escalate if deadlines slip.

Step 4: Verification and reporting: implement three-tier verification: internal checks, independent assessments, and worker voice. Publish quarterly results to buyers, investors, and civil society; adjust targets in response to disruptions, including pandemic-related plant closures and lockdowns. Reopen facilities with safety protocols, while maintaining traceability across tiers.

Bangladesh case study: bangladesh facilities illustrate the path. In bangladesh, 180 facilities were screened, 72% closed corrective actions within 120 days, and 28% extended due to supply constraints during the pandemic; after reopen, sites reported safer operations, fewer lost-time incidents, and better grievance handling, reinforcing the value of early planning and enforcement.

Measurement and Disclosure: Indicators, audits, and reporting templates

Adopt a standardized measurement framework and publish quarterly public reports. Start with an initial core set of indicators, establish a baseline, and run a pulse every month across factories; this could set a clear, verifiable standard for corporate accountability.

Define indicators across workers, safety, wages, overtime, and audit outcomes. Use audits to verify data while incorporating akter voices from workers and unions; identify the third-most persistent risk among top five suppliers, and track its remediation. That effort could influence revenue decisions when noncompliance persists beyond a month-long cycle. Also, como guidance should tailor indicators to local conditions.

Reporting templates consist of an Indicator Registry, an Audit Log, a Corrective Action Tracker, and a Public Disclosure Template. This aligns with the Center for Business and Human Rights guidance on corporate accountability. Ensure these templates provide definitions, data sources, sampling approaches, privacy protections, and a 2-3 sentence case description. They should be provided in editable formats so partners could adapt to local regulation and needs. This approach captures everything that informs decisions, and using recent cases to refine definitions helps ensure accuracy. This is worth sharing widely.

Place data in a secure data place with versioning and access controls; after weeklong fieldwork, insights arrive on the dashboard and remediation plans update. Continue to refine thresholds with input from workers and akter communities; este step ensures alignment with local regulations. In Dhaka city garment factories, weeklong fieldwork revealed gaps in wage documentation and overtime records; this evidence has been incorporated into the dashboard and is guiding remediation. For markets where stakeholders desea more transparency, the template set can be adapted while maintaining core metrics.

Over the year, publish a consolidated dashboard that shows trend lines for core indicators and a concise narrative alongside the numbers. We wrote the initial guidance and provided concrete case summaries so readers can compare across markets. There has been progress, but there is more to do; there is room to improve.

Milestones and Case Studies: Key events shaping corporate accountability

Start with a month-long map of your supply chain and publish anexos disponibles en español to guide stakeholders right away. Provide a clear baseline for safety metrics that their teams can verify, and establish a consistent línea for incident reporting across borders. This approach helps you face challenges with transparency, build trust, and continue progress even when tensions rise.

1. 2013 Rana Plaza collapse (Dhaka, Bangladesh): toll reached hundreds of workers, triggering a wave of independent inspections and new safety commitments. The biggest catalysts came from brands that provided remediation funds and stricter oversight, while others didnt respond quickly. The incident shifted benchmark expectations for supply-chain risk management and linked accountability directly to factory conditions.
2. 2013–2018 Bangladesh Accord and Alliance for Fire and Building Safety: a legally binding framework established to oversee inspections, remediation, and worker safety. The center helped coordinate capacity-building efforts across suppliers and linked local regulators with global buyers, ensuring that findings and progress were visible in anexos and línea dashboards. Gripped by the momentum, many brands granted access to audit results and safety plans, including levi and others, to demonstrate real change to their stakeholders.
3. 2016–2019 expanded supplier transparency and public reporting: firms began publishing annual safety metrics and toll data, highlighting improvements and gaps. A notable pattern emerged where right-sizing remediation programs reduced the number of at-risk facilities, and they began to share results with communities along the delta and near Chittagong ports, improving trust with workers and civil society groups.
4. 2020–2021 pandemic and delta-disruption effects: cross-border shipments faced down shifts in capacity, with month-long delays in some corridors. Companies that maintained open linhas de reporte and kept workers informed reduced reputational damage and stayed aligned with local laws and worker representatives. Communities near Chittagong and other hubs faced the toll of interruption, prompting accelerated remediation and worker-support initiatives.
5. 2022–2024 enhanced reporting and annex development: centers linked to regional offices published year-by-year reviews, with anexos disponibles en español and inglés. The emphasis shifted to continuous improvement, with kapasidad-building programs for suppliers and a focus on equality of access to information (igual access) across all tiers of the supply chain. Lopez-led teams coordinated field visits to facilities, documented outcomes, and provided actionable next steps to their partners.
6. 2024 onward: integrated grievance mechanisms and public dashboards: organizations granted real-time updates on remediation progress and safety metrics. The approach allows brands to identify gaps quickly, reduce risk, and maintain a cooperative stance with workers, communities, and regulators. Firms continue to align their practices with global standards and local realities, ensuring that safety stays at the forefront of all operations wherever operations occur.

• Case Study A: Rana Plaza and the resulting safety accords demonstrated how fast-moving reforms can reduce risk when leadership, like lopez-led teams, aligns with local communities. The toll on workers underscored the need for continuous monitoring and up-to-date información accessible through anexos disponibles en español and inglés.
• Case Study B: Levi’s supplier-alignment program shows how steady data-sharing and capacity-building can shift behavior across hundreds of facilities. Their collaboration with unions and civil-society partners set a practical model for other brands to follow, including clear reporting lines in regiones like Chittagong and along river deltas.
• Case Study C: Chittagong port and delta-region improvements illustrate how logistics hubs influence safety compliance and incident response. By focusing on capacity, owned by centers and linked to local authorities, brands can reduce delays and improve overall reliability for workers facing the upfront toll of supply-chain volatility.