Labor Standards: Forced Labor, Child Labor & Freedom of Association

The labour standards pillar is the foundation of every social compliance audit. SMETA, WRAP, and buyer codes of conduct all trace their labour requirements to the same two sources: the ETI Base Code and the core conventions of the International Labour Organization. The ETI Base Code sets nine clauses: employment is freely chosen; freedom of association and collective bargaining are respected; working conditions are safe and hygienic; child labour shall not be used; living wages are paid; working hours are not excessive; no discrimination is practised; regular employment is provided; and no harsh or inhumane treatment is allowed. Where local law and the code differ, the stronger standard applies.

This lesson covers the three clauses that produce the most critical audit findings in garment factories: forced labour, child labour, and freedom of association. Each is a zero-tolerance area for buyers, which means a single confirmed case can suspend orders. Prevention therefore has to be systematic, not a matter of good intentions.

Forced labour is work performed involuntarily under menace of penalty, as defined by ILO Convention 29, supplemented by Convention 105 on the abolition of forced labour. The definition matters because it excludes ordinary hard work and poor conditions on their own. What turns bad employment into forced labour is the element of involuntariness backed by a penalty: the worker cannot leave without losing wages owed, facing a threat, or repaying a debt.

The ILO publishes eleven indicators of forced labour, and auditors screen for them in every audit. In garment factories the most common are abuse of vulnerability, debt bondage, deception in recruitment, restriction of movement, isolation, intimidation and threats, retention of identity documents, withholding of wages, abusive working and living conditions, and excessive overtime imposed under threat. No single indicator automatically proves forced labour, but a strong indicator, such as retained passports or a recruitment debt, triggers a critical finding until the factory proves otherwise.

Recruitment is where forced labour risk enters most factories. A broker charges a fee, the worker borrows to pay it, and the debt keeps the worker in the job. The factory may never see the fee, which is exactly why the employer-pays principle exists: no worker should pay any fee or cost to obtain or keep employment. Recruitment costs belong to the employer. Factories must write this rule into every broker and subcontractor contract, and then verify compliance by asking workers directly, in confidential interviews, whether they paid anything to anyone to get the job.

Other controls are equally concrete. Never hold a worker original identity document, bank card, or passport, for any reason, including safekeeping. Never restrict movement outside working hours through locked dormitories or guarded exits. Never withhold wages as a deposit against leaving. Never use threats of dismissal, deportation, or violence to enforce overtime or silence complaints. Each of these practices is an indicator on its own, and each is entirely within factory control to eliminate.

Child labour is prohibited by ILO Convention 138 on minimum age and Convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour. In Bangladesh, the law sets 14 years as the minimum age for employment, and hazardous work is restricted to workers aged 18 and above. Auditors check the youngest workers first, and they check documents, not faces, because appearance-based age judgement fails on exactly the borderline cases that matter.

Factories should also maintain a written list of hazardous tasks — dangerous machinery, heavy lifting, toxic chemicals, night work — and verify quarterly that no under-18 worker is assigned to any item on it. Apprenticeship and light work arrangements, where the law permits them, must still respect the minimum age and must not interfere with schooling.

ILO Conventions 87 and 98 protect the right of workers to form and join organisations of their own choosing and to bargain collectively, free from management interference. In practice, auditors test this right in three ways: can workers join a union without fear, can elected representatives meet and negotiate, and does management remain neutral rather than favouring, funding, or obstructing worker organisations.

Bangladesh law also provides for participation committees in larger establishments, giving workers an elected forum for consultation with management. Factories should verify the current statutory worker threshold and formation rules, constitute the committee lawfully where required, and treat it as a consultation channel, not as a substitute for union rights. A suggestion box, a welfare officer, and a grievance channel are all useful, but none of them replaces the right to organise.

Management neutrality has practical rules. Do not ask job applicants about union membership. Do not punish, transfer, or dismiss workers for union activity. Do not create or fund a management-controlled worker body presented as a union. Allow lawful union access as the law provides, and bargain in good faith where a recognised union exists. Retaliation against a worker for organising is itself a critical finding.

Discovery of a child worker or a forced labour case triggers remediation, and remediation has a fixed order: protect the worker first, then fix the system. For a child worker, remove the child from work immediately, arrange schooling and family support, pay all wages owed, and keep the case confidential. Dismissing the child with no support is not remediation; it pushes the child toward worse work elsewhere and is treated as a further violation.

For a forced labour case, repay any recruitment fees and withheld wages in full, return all documents, remove movement restrictions, and end the arrangement with any broker responsible. Then fix the system: change the contract terms, change the broker, and add the failed control to the quarterly internal audit. Document every step, because auditors and buyers will ask for evidence that remediation was completed, not merely promised.

A finishing factory in Narayanganj discovered during an internal audit that a labour broker supplying contract cleaners had charged each cleaner a recruitment fee equal to one month wages, deducted from their first three pay packets. The cleaners were afraid to complain because the broker controlled their transport to the factory. The factory itself had never charged a fee and had no record of one, which is precisely how broker-mediated forced labour hides.

The factory ended the broker arrangement, reimbursed every affected cleaner in full from factory funds, hired the cleaners directly on standard contracts, and added an employer-pays clause to every future labour supply contract, with an explicit ban on fee-charging and document retention. It also added recruitment-fee checks to its quarterly internal audit, covering every contractor and subcontractor on site. The next buyer audit found no forced labour indicators in the cleaning workforce.

The most common mistakes are all avoidable. Judging age by appearance instead of documents. Accepting a broker assurance about fees without asking workers. Treating a suggestion box as freedom of association. Dismissing a discovered child worker with no support. Keeping worker documents in a safe for safekeeping. Each of these has produced critical findings in real audits, and each is fixed by a written procedure plus a quarterly check.

Labour standards compliance rests on three controls: recruitment that charges workers nothing and holds nothing of the worker, age verification that happens before employment and is double-checked, and genuine freedom for workers to organise and speak. When a failure is found, remediation protects the worker first and fixes the system second. The next lesson applies the same discipline to working hours and payroll, where record mismatches are the most common severe finding of all.