Access to Remedy Hub
This Knowledge Exchange Hub aims to support practitioners in understanding how to design and implement effective non-state-based access to remedy for workers.
Funder
This hub is a collection of outputs and research activities carried out thanks to multiple funding, including:
- Research England Quality-Related Research Policy Funding
- University of Nottingham Funding for KE and Impact
- Nottingham University Business School Impact Funding
Current research team
What is access to remedy and why is it relevant to businesses?
Remedy aims to rectify human rights abuses -including adverse impacts on labour rights- committed by companies directly through their own activities or by virtue of their business relationships.
Adverse impacts occur when an action or omission removes or reduces the ability of workers to enjoy their human rights, including rights to decent living and working conditions.
The provision of remedy is directly linked to corporate accountability: a company takes responsibility for its actions, answers to affected individuals, and is held accountable if its conduct was found to have been deficient.
Remedies may include apologies, restitution, rehabilitation, financial or non-financial compensation, punitive sanctions, injunctions, guarantees of non-repetition. Rights holders affected by business-related abuses should be able to access a bouquet of remedies, including state-led and non-state-led mechanisms (the focus of our research). Because of their legal status paired with the short-term of their stay, migrant workers’ access to state-based remedy remains minimal, increasing the value of effective business’ actions on the matter.
The first step for businesses to provide access to remedy is through grievance mechanisms, which are a means through which workers can raise concerns about actual or potential negative impacts caused by business activities.
Current challenges
Our research has revealed some common challenges in the provision of grievance mechanisms and access to remedy to migrant workers:
- Tick box exercise – too often organisations do not use grievance mechanisms as a risk management tool that can unlock operational and financial advantages (including timely identification of issues, prevention of escalation, improvement of labour relations), but rather as a mere legal or social compliance activity.
- Disconnection between grievances and remedy – at a business level, there is little understanding of the connection between grievance mechanisms and the substantive aspect of access to remedy.
- Lack of a gender lens – grievance mechanisms rarely include a gender dimension to their accessibility – for example, a designated safe way for women to report gender-specific concerns.
- Over-reliance on audits – social audits and quantitative KPIs are usually unable to capture workers’ vulnerabilities and abuses, and do not automatically guarantee an increase in accountability and the business ability to provide remedy.
- Informality - the majority of grievances are filed informally by workers and are not logged, which makes difficult to verify if and how they are resolved.
- Difficult to access – grievance mechanisms might not be accessible due to workers’ lack of information about the channels, fear of retaliation, short-term of their stay in a country, language or other barriers.
Resources
Academic publications
- Bianchi, L.; Caruana, R.; Shivji, A. K. (2024) - "Engaging Marginalized Stakeholders: Towards a dialogical theorization of effective corporate-rightsholder remedy" - Journal of Business Ethics
- Moore, H.; Kishna, S.; Davis, T. (2024) - "Access to remedy for survivors of all forms of slavery, trafficking and forced labour" - Journal of Modern Slavery
- Bianchi, L.; Landman, T. (2024) - "Business and human rights", in Concise Encyclopedia of Corporate Social Responsibility, pp.1-7, Edward Elgar
