Can mobile phones improve workers’ rights?

In a novel partnership between ETI and the Hult/Ashridge Business School’s MBA programme, ETI set two tough challenges for the MBA students as part of their final course assessment: How effective are mobile phones in helping workers address business and human rights issues? And, do price wars contribute to the risk of modern slavery? We were so impressed that we are using their findings to inform our work. We are also sharing the highlights in two blogs, starting with mobile phones. Two representatives of the group, Sarala Ili and Talha Sidiqui, were nominated to present the information on mobile phones.

Mobile phones are now almost ubiquitous with a 90% penetration rate in developing countries. That compares relatively well with a global penetration rate of 99%. Furthermore, penetration rates are expected to rise to 114% by 2020.

It would seem to be an easy decision to utilise the technology to support workers and to address any exploitation concerns.

And that’s happening already. But, efficacy needs to be proven.

The students were therefore asked to analyse how effective mobile phone services truly are in addressing worker engagement. We wanted to know if they help to advance ETI Base Code Clause 2 – the right to freedom of association and collective bargaining.

This is how they approached the challenge:

First of all, they explored what mobile phone worker engagement services already exist.
Then they analysed the effectiveness of the identified services.
This was followed by a multi-stakeholder analysis of their effectiveness study.
Finally, they geared their recommendations to ETI’s current strategy, Perspective 2020 and what it is seeking to achieve – a road map for ETI’s members to remain ethical leaders by confronting exploitation at its source, influencing policy and practice where it counts most and encouraging workers worldwide to speak up.

They identified six possible opportunities for workers: finding jobs, worker scheduling, identity management, payroll management, complaints/worker representation and learning. And because their time was limited, they decided to focus on the last two: complaints/worker representation and learning.

Analysing four data initiatives

The students interviewed LabourLink, LaborVoices, Adidas and the ILO Better Factories Cambodia initiative as well as workers, union organisers and factory managers, and here we would like to thank everyone for their help in the research.

LabourLink

Is operational in 16 countries reaching nearly 663,000 workers. It counts, amongst others, two ETI member companies as clients, Marks and Spencer and C&A.
Its voice calling technology is used to monitor working conditions in real time, track impact and communicate directly with workers.

LabourLink runs the Bangladesh Alliance helpline. The Alliance, alongside the Bangladesh Accord, is one of the two major company-led initiatives set up after the Rana Plaza disaster to address health and safety amongst other issues. It can point to some really useful data: the numbers of substantive issues reported having risen from four a month in 2014 to a monthly high of 351 in 2015. Factories with workers using the hotline have tripled in the past year.

LabourVoices

Is present in 50 countries and includes working with Syrian refugees in Turkey and helping to improve water availability in factories in Bangladesh amongst its projects
It collects information about working conditions, validates and prioritises complaints before sending to management and sends feedback to the worker.

Adidas

Its FairPlay App is accessed by nearly 264,000 of its workers in 58 factories in three countries, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. That’s roughly a quarter of its supply chain.
It allows workers to report issues as well as giving advice and information on wages, occupational health and safety, working hours and social insurance (pensions and other benefits).

ILO Better Factories Cambodia

Its mobile phone project operates in 393 factories reaching 700,000 workers.
It monitors factory conditions and educates workers in three priority areas including personal health, wages and allowances and occupational health and safety. In 2014 in the third quarter it received over 17,500 valid calls.

What do stakeholders think?

Not surprisingly our researchers found pros and cons with all the initiatives when as part of their stakeholder analysis they talked to factory owners, trade unionists and workers as well as operational staff.

Here are some specific comments:

Even though trade unionists expressed concerns about the potential for owners to bypass unions and consequently ignore the importance of freedom of association, they recognised that “everyone has a mobile phone even though many people can’t read and write properly. They just know that the 'green App' is used for calling when there are issues.”
As a worker confirmed, “if I can call someone who listens it’s useful and not like calling and talking to a machine.” But workers also said, “it’s difficult to find someone reliable at the end of the phone.” Furthermore, feedback is often not in local languages and workers get confused around a myriad of terms and conditions.
Factory owners worried about costs being passed down the supply chain and potential misinterpretation of data. One owner said, "in our experience, workers that don't know their rights tend to be either extremely positive or extremely negative...At the stage that my company is in, I would want a helpline that educates a worker about his or her rights."

Concerns were also raised over prioritisation, with the arguably easier issues of health and safety taking precedence. Meanwhile, other calls important to mainly women workers were felt to be routinely designated as non-urgent, including harassment and wage differentials. And sometimes their very success causes problems. In 2014 the ILO for example only had enough resources to analyse 5,000 of 10,000 incoming phone calls.

Yet, while it’s fair to say there was scepticism, it’s also important to make clear that mobile phone technology is making a difference. One provider was able to show that 60% of issues were satisfactorily dealt with. Additionally, companies using hotlines and Apps have realised that audits are not conclusive and that they can provide evidence that worker engagement is growing.

This very useful SWOT analysis sums up the findings:

StrengthsWeaknesses

High mobile penetration.
Gives a real real-time window into supply chains.
Increases worker engagement.
Is an efficient way to empower workers.

Limited by the technologies used.
Can be a non-transparent process.
Lack of collaboration with trade unions which can improve workers’ rights.
Lack of supervision by independent international bodies.

OpportunitiesThreats

Education opportunities are currently underutilised and could be improved.
Mobile complements other channels (social media/face-to-face/NGOs).
There’s the potential to engage trade unions more.
Creates shared value between society and business.

Culture differences in technology use.
A threat of becoming another tick-box exercise.
Vulnerability to cyber-attacks and loss of personal data.
Conflicts of interest on implementation.

Recommendations

To quote from Sarala and Talha's presentation:

“Technology is beneficial to society, so long as it is used properly.”

The students felt that to effectively implement mobile phone services for the benefit of workers, what was needed was a ‘pull’ action rather than pushing initiatives. That means stakeholders should be invited towards a platform. Furthermore, they also felt this could only happen when initiatives proved their worth to both businesses and workers.

Within that overall view, they found that mobile phone technology was most impactful in informing workers about their rights but that it was not necessarily being used for this as of now. They also found that the technology has the potential to improve transparency and accountability and increase worker representation.

Most importantly, as Sarala and Talha stated, there is a need to optimise existing processes to adapt to the need of workers.