Social responsibility | Leading practices from the 2021 Seafood Stewardship Index

Only half of the companies in scope commit to respecting human rights. A further 37% of companies commit to respecting labour rights and expect the same from their suppliers. While these commitments are crucial to set the ‘tone from the top’, indicating that senior management considers respect for human rights to be a minimum standard for conducting business, commitment should be followed by implementation of processes, particularly, a human rights due diligence process. The RISE platform provides guidance for companies on how to make a commitment to human rights and how to assess salient human rights risks in seafood supply chains.

Companies were assessed on the initial three steps of the human rights due diligence process; focusing on how companies identify and assess human rights risks and impacts and integrate and act on their findings, across both their own operations and supply chain. Worryingly, 28 out of the 30 companies scored zero on all human rights due diligence indicators. Only Thai Union met all criteria, demonstrating they have the fundamentals of human rights due diligence in place.

Leading practice example

In 2020, Thai Union published its Human Rights Due Diligence Framework, disclosing a process to assess actual and potential risks of human rights violations caused by or linked to its operations and supply chain. Thai Union uses a combination of desk-based assessment, social dialogue-based audits in factories, and vessel audits to identify human rights risks. Salient human rights risks that the company has identified include forced labour and the charging of recruitment fees, unsafe working conditions, and a lack of freedom of association and workers’ voice. To address its salient human rights risks, the company implements various policies and measures such as an Ethical Migrant Recruitment Policy to tackle forced labour and the charging of recruitment fees. To address unsafe working conditions, Thai Union partnered with the International Transport Workers’ Federation to co-host a health and safety training workshop for more than 70 fishers in Chumphon, Thailand in 2019.

Finally, the company undertook action to improve the mechanisms it has in place for people to easily raise an alert when human rights violations do occur as a result of its activities. Thai Union partnered with the Issara Institute, an NGO tackling human trafficking and forced labour – issues to which the company has previously been linked, to provide workers with access to the Issara helpline. This helpline, which supplements the company’s own grievance mechanism and is available in five languages, allows migrant workers in particular to more easily raise concerns or submit requests for help independently of Thai Union management. Details of the helpline are provided on posters at factories and at the ports in which Thai Union operates. As the company identified lack of worker voice as a salient risk, the company is also undertaking further steps to strengthen worker voice mechanisms in five processing facilities in Thailand in collaboration with Verite.

Our benchmark results revealed that only eight companies have an explicit policy to address working and living conditions on board fishing vessels. Only two of those companies complement this commitment with having monitoring procedures in place. The RISE platform offers guidance for companies on how to ensure decent work at sea.

Thai Union leads in this area by having a clear commitment to ensure decent working and living conditions on board fishing vessels. It also has a process in place to monitor compliance and discloses its monitoring results. The company further provides evidence of how improvements are being implemented by engaging with suppliers to improve their performance and compliance with their Vessel Code of Conduct.