LARRGE Working Conference

Conference Report

CSR and the interrelatedness of Decent Work and Human Rights

The first day of the Working Conference focused on the relationship of the concepts of decent work and human rights.

It was opened with a panel discussion on the positive contribution of CSR on labour rights in today's globalised world, with inputs from Carien Duisterwinkel (CSR Europe), Mark Hodge (Global Business Initiative on Human Rights), Dwight Justice (International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC), Marina Monaco (European Trade Union Confederation, ETUC) and Hansje Plagman (Aim for Human Rights). The debate was complemented with lively contributions and questions from the audience, facilitated by Bettina Haller.

Emily Sims from the International Labour Organization continued with her keynote speech on the tasks and objectives of the ILO and the Better Work program, both aiming at improving the compliance with labour standards and thus strengthening the performance of the business sector around the World. "Reinforcing a certain set of universally accepted values only works, if everyone is on the same page", Emily said, and pointed out that the existing "plethora of CSR tools" is likely to bring about more damage than doing good. "A lot of companies come to me simply because they're overwhelmed and they need the easy way to try to deal with things", she encouraged the work of the LARRGE research team subsequent to the presentation of Barbara Linder and Astrid Steinkellner (BIM), who had shortly introduced the LARRGE project. Information on the state of research, upcoming steps and possible ways of contributing to the development of the Labour-Rights-Responsibilities-Guide, like the Online Survey for internal and external stakeholders, concluded the morning session of the first conference day.

In the afternoon, different Working Groups (WG) either tackled key challenges in CSR tool development (→ results of WG1), the role of CSR in the context of the current economic crisis (→ results of WG2) or questions in relation to Decent Work and Diversity Management (→ results of WG3).

The Global Financial Crisis' Impact on the Human Rights Accountability of Companies

In the evening, a public panel discussion (→ Public Lecture), co-organised by the Research Platform "Human Rights in the European Context", offered a broad range of perspectives on the possible impacts of the economic crisis on companies' human rights performance, which were represented by Karin Lukas (BIM), Birgit Forstnig-Errath (International Business Leaders Forum, IBLF), Tom Sorell (Centre for Global Ethics, University of Birmingham; → presentation), Stefan Kerl (Clean Clothes Campaign) and Patrick Doris (Freshfields). In this context, Karin Lukas also presented her newly published book on Human Rights and Business ("Menschenrechte und Wirtschaft", Lukas/Hutter, NWV 2009).

Gaining insight in CSR tool development and experience with application

The second conference day was dedicated to knowledge sharing and acquiring concrete insights in the practical implications of CSR tools.

Three Focus Groups (FG) worked on the experiences with respect to starting a CSR business policy (→ results of FG1), on CSR tools that particularly addressed the needs of small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) (→ results of FG2) and on the specialities with regard to monitoring and participation mechanisms (→ results of FG3).

Albeit scheduled for the final afternoon session, the individual Expert Interviews were at the top the LARRGE agenda: open to the conference public, our highly qualified guests gave in-depth insights in their long standing personal experiences with the development of CSR tools and strategies, lessons learned and possible future outlooks.

After two days of intensive work, the lesson is quite clear:

The time has come for harmonisation of existing CSR tools instead of creating even more. In the meantime, initiatives like LARRGE might serve to guide companies through the dense tool-jungle!

Click here to view the Main Outcomes.