Last week, members of the European Parliament’s Employment and Social Affairs Committee (EMPL) voted through their opinion on the proposed Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. While the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) has the responsibility for drafting the parliament’s position, the opinion of the EMPL has to be taken into consideration when Parliament votes on the issue in plenary session.
The EMPL wants to see strengthened trade union involvement in corporate due diligence processes. When it comes to lodging complaints with multinational businesses about alleged human rights shortfalls, EMPL proposes that “Organisations who could submit such complaints should involve worker's representatives, including trade unions, who represent individuals working in the value chain concerned and civil society organisations active in the areas related to the value chain concerned, especially where they have knowledge about a potential or actual adverse impact.”
The opinion is wide ranging, giving unions and NGOs carte blanche to lodge complaints, no matter how tenuous their link to the business concerned. And it extends to the whole value chain, however that is to be defined. While many complaints will be judged to be ill-founded, the time, effort and cost dealing with them can be significant. While the managers of a business have a business to run with all the complexity that involves across multiple disciplines, unions and NGOs generally only have one activity and can devote considerable resources to that one activity which they would describe as “holding businesses to account”.
The EMPL opinion also:
- Defines “stakeholders” as “potentially affected groups” such as the company’s employees, the employees of its subsidiaries, and other individuals, groups, communities or entities whose rights or interests are or could be affected by the products, services and operations of that company, its subsidiaries and its business relationships. It also includes the representatives of potentially affected groups, such as human rights or environmental organisations.
- States that where a corrective action or remedy needs to happen, EMPL wants to see “representatives of affected stakeholders” be in a position to monitor the proposed plan. The corrective action plan has to be developed in consultation with stakeholders and shared with and monitored by the representatives of the affected stakeholders.
Underlying assumption that businesses are inherently inclined to violate human rights in the interest of making money, while unions and NGOs are always in a position to call out such wrongdoing. But we now know from recent events in the European Parliament, the “Qatargate” affair involving bribery of members of the EU Parliament, that this may not be the case when it comes to NGOs. Over the years there have also been plenty of examples of union corruption. The general secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation is currently suspended from office because of his involvement in “Qatargate.”