Worker-Driven Social Responsibility Network

In 2015, worker organizations, allies, and technical advisors came together to create the Worker-driven Social Responsibility Network for the purpose of expanding, promoting, and replicating this model in supply chains around the world. With the support of its staff, the Network builds understanding of the WSR model among a wide range of relevant actors, provides support and coordination for worker-led efforts to replicate the model, and shifts the paradigm to establish the model as the baseline for workers’ rights programs within global supply chains. The WSR model is founded on the understanding that, in order to achieve meaningful and lasting improvements, human rights protections in corporate supply chains must be worker-driven, enforcement-focused, and based on legally binding commitments that assign responsibility for improving working conditions to the global corporations at the top of those supply chains. WSR provides a proven new form of power for previously powerless workers to protect and enforce their own rights. These rights can include—according to the circumstances and priorities of the workers driving the program—the right to freedom of association, the right to a safe and healthy work environment (including the right to work free from sexual harassment and sexual violence), and the right to work free of forced labor or violence, among other fundamental rights.