On June 16 and 17, the Ethical Trade Forums organized their Regional Online Event, to discuss “The importance of Due Diligence in Social Audit and in Labour Migration Management”.
The agenda prepared for this was divided into two days, in which we had different experts, workshops, updates from the Working Groups and Best Practices presentations.
During the day of June 16, which was attended by 134 people, we had a panel of experts on Circular Labor Migration, made up of Patricia García López from HUELVA ACOGE, Chonchi Martín from CÁRITAS HUELVA, Manuel Piedra from UPA and Nieves Martí from Rio Cinca Group.
The debate was opened by Chonchi Martín, highlighting the challenge that arises when we talk about Circular Labour Migration, which is the circulation itself of temporary workers through campaigns.
Next, Patricia García López offered us a more focused vision on the legal reality and explained the diverse types of work and residence permits. She also addressed a solution to facilitate the situation of workers, labour roots, which is a novel measure that bears similarities to the exceptional work permit.
Then Manuel Piedra expanded the image we have on this issue, focusing on the importance of all these workers being treated with dignity. He pointed out four fundamental objectives to address the situation: provide documentation to the workers, the employers in charge of these workers must have an attitude of total responsibility, the workers must have decent accommodation and the flow of migration must be controlled and improved.
Finally, Nieves who shared with all the attendees a solution to this situation, the creation of a temporary contract office to achieve a labour migration that really works and is dignified and fair with all workers.
After the panel of experts, we gave way to the update by the working groups.
The Labour Standard Working Group, led by Yolanda Serrano and Miguel Ángel Moya, presented us with the latest project they have been working on to date. This is the Guide and Checklist of the Principles of the Forums. Both documents are currently in the public consultation phase. You can find both, the Guide and the Checklist in our ETF Documents section on the web.
The Sustainability Working Group, represented by Marisa Ruíz, put us in a position of the projects to come and of all the seminars that we will give from the forums to address this area so important in our sector.
As always in our Events we organized two workshops that revolved around the main theme. In this case there were two, the first one presented by Leonie Schmid and Louise Herring from Food Network for Ethical Trade (FNET) in which Ethical Recruitment was discussed and the second, carried out by the Labour Migration Working Group, more work was done on depth on the search for solutions to the topic previously presented during the panel of experts, Circular Labour Migration.
We also had the participation of Grupo Cartuja and Grupo Paloma who presented us with their Best Practices, “Application of the Checklist for the management of temporary employment agencies” and “Conciliation centre” respectively. You can find more detailed information on our Best Practices and Experiences Collection.
As always, from the Ethical Trade Forums we want to thank all the speakers and especially the attendees for showing so much interest.
All information, including shared documents, links to full-day videos and workshops will be available in the Private area of our website (click on Private Documents).
If you are not registered, please do so here. Register in the private area and you will receive a password to access it.