Trade unions as key enablers of effective Responsible Business Conduct in India

On 13–14 May, trade union representatives actively participated in a Capacity Building Workshop on RBC. The workshop focused on equipping trade union representatives with guidelines and practical measures, such as the ILO’s MNE Declaration, India's National Guidelines on Responsible Business Conduct (NGRBC), and Human Rights Due Diligence (HRDD). The participants also engaged in scenario-based group work, explored other countries' experiences from Japan and Indonesia, and discussed how to operationalize RBC in their own contexts.

In his keynote address, Mr Satoshi Sasaki, Deputy Director, ILO Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, underscored that “workers play an important role in human rights due diligence process, not only as “key stakeholders” for businesses, but also as “labour rights defenders” and “capacity builders’'’. The trade union leaders echoed this call and discussed how the MNE Declaration can help make workers’ voices heard and reflected in business operations, ensuring that HRDD processes are “meaningful” and “effective’’ in sustaining RBC.

On 15 May, the trade union representatives took their engagement a step further during a Consultation Workshop on Adaptation of NGRBC for the automotive sector. The workshop was co-hosted by the ILO and the Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA), aiming at reflecting workers' voices to the draft guidelines for the automotive sector, which was formulated through multi-stakeholder Advisory Committee meetings under the leadership of IICA, with support from the ILO. Trade union representatives shared real-world challenges from across the automotive value chain and advocated for a bottom-up approach to due diligence that extends beyond Tier 1 suppliers.

These events marked a significant step in empowering trade unions to take the lead in shaping responsible business practices. By building their capacities and amplifying their voices in multi-stakeholder processes, the role of trade unions will increase to ensure that workers are not just stakeholders, but active agents to promote RBC and decent work in Indian businesses.

These events were held as part of the ILO’s project “Building Responsible Value Chains in Asia through the Promotion of Decent Work in Business Operations (Phase II)”, funded by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan. The project aims to promote inclusive, responsible and sustainable enterprises and decent work in supply chains through capacity-building programmes for enterprises and ILO’s constituents - government, employers and workers - in four Asian countries including India.