COLLABORATE
Accelerate and expand impact through collaboration
Elevate your vision and catalyze change at scale by collaborating across supply chains and sourcing regions.
ACTION
01
Engage in diverse, collaborative efforts to accelerate and scale improvements
Participate in pre-competitive collaborations
- Join pre-competitive collaborations and other initiatives that support social responsibility improvements.
Engage with stakeholders
- Engage various stakeholders in improvements, including standard-setting bodies, international agencies, NGOs, civil society organizations, trade unions, and other groups.
- Consider a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between employers and trade unions or other employee representatives.
- Examples include the ACT on Living Wages MOU signed by the global union IndustriALL and member companies to establish collective agreements addressing wage-fixing in the garment industry.
- Consider a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between employers and trade unions or other employee representatives.
ACTION
02
Advocate with governments and other regulatory bodies
Promote regulations
- Promote regulations, conventions, and other legal frameworks that protect human and labor rights and promote decent work for all seafood workers.
- Prioritize major seafood production countries, key regions, and oceans to promote regulations that improve conditions for workers in seafood production and processing.
- Prioritize major seafood import countries for regulations that encourage human rights due diligence and trade in legal seafood.
Support government initiatives
- Support government initiatives and international agreements that promote best practices for social responsibility in global supply chains through advocacy letters, meetings, and other forms of engagement.
- The Community includes information about pre-competitive collaborations and multi-stakeholder initiatives.
Cambridge University Press
Institute for Human Rights and Business
Optimize Your Company's Path
Discover how companies can apply the RISE Roadmap to improve their social responsibility practices.
Retailers/Brands
- Work with pre-competitive and collaborative initiatives that align multiple companies’ seafood goals and improve supply chain practices.
- Engage with governments to promote the adoption of regulations, conventions, and other legal frameworks that protect human and labor rights.
- Partner with organizations supporting and advocating for labor rights, ensuring that workers’ voices are centered in policy-making, advocacy, and other decision-making.
- For multinational brands and retailers: work with groups such as international trade unions to develop Global Framework Agreements.
Suppliers
- Undertake collective advocacy with other suppliers to strengthen leverage and engagement with governments to promote the adoption of regulations, conventions, and other legal frameworks that protect human and labor rights.
- Partner with organizations supporting and advocating for labor rights, ensuring that workers’ voices are centered in policy-making, advocacy, and other decision-making.
- Support civil society organizations that protect and advocate for seafood workers’ rights at local and international levels (see RISE Community).
Processors
- Partner with and support civil society organizations that protect and advocate for workers’ rights in seafood and other seasonal jobs that may share a workforce.
- Explore the RISE Community to learn about local civil society organizations working on improvements in your company’s regions of interest.
Producers
- Partner with and support civil society organizations that protect and advocate for workers’ rights in seafood and other seasonal jobs that may share a workforce.
- Explore the RISE Community to learn about local civil society organizations working on improvements in your company’s regions of interest.
Build the Foundation
Responsible Recruitment
- Encourage peers and other companies to support the Employer Pays Principles, including through joining collaboratives such as the Leadership Group for Responsible Recruitment.
- Advocate for strengthened protections during the migration process, especially in countries that send or receive large numbers of international workers.
- Collaborate with workers and civil society organizations, including worker groups and trade unions, to identify specific needs and improvements in key regions or sectors.
- Prioritize organizations that are familiar with the local context, language, and may have already established trust with the community.
Worker Engagement
- Advocate for all seafood workers’ right to collectively bargain and freely associate, regardless of immigration status.
- Support the legal right of workers and civil society organizations to report on and make claims of workplace abuse without fear of retribution.
- Establish dialogue and build trust with trade unions, workers networks, and local communities.
Decent Work at Sea
- Encourage flag and port states to ratify the four pillars of fishing vessel safety, if they have not already, and implement standards:
- ILO Work in Fishing Convention No. 188.
- FAO Port State Measures Agreement.
- IMO Cape Town Agreement (See “Status of Treaties”).
- IMO Standards for Training, Certification, and Watchkeeping for Fishing Vessel Personnel (See “Status of Treaties”).
- Support the development of implementation guidance on decent work or social responsibility at sea (e.g., PAS 1550).
- Encourage fisheries management bodies, including those with limited social mandates, to set labor standards for crew (even if voluntary).