KnowTheChain benchmarks current corporate practices, develops insights, and provides practical resources that inform investor decisions and enable companies to comply with growing legal obligations while operating more transparently and responsibly.
The KnowTheChain benchmarks aim to help companies protect the wellbeing of workers by incentivizing companies and identifying gaps in each sector evaluated.
The KnowTheChain methodology is based on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights and covers policy commitments, due diligence, and remedy. The methodology uses the ILO core labor standards (which cover the human rights that the ILO has declared to be fundamental rights at work: freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining, and the elimination of forced labor, child labor, and discrimination) as a baseline standard. The methodology has been developed through consultation with a wide range of stakeholders and a review of other benchmarks, frameworks, and guidelines such as the OECD Due Diligence Guidance on Responsible Business Conduct.
To support collective worker empowerment, the company works with local or global trade unions to support freedom of association in its supply chains. It enters into a global framework agreement that covers its supply chains and/or an enforceable supply chain labor rights agreement with trade unions or worker organizations. Where there are regulatory constraints on freedom of association, the company ensures workplace environments in which workers are able to pursue alternative forms of organizing. The company:
(1) works with independent local or global trade unions to support freedom of association in its supply chains;
(2) discloses that it is party to a global framework agreement that covers its supply chains and/or an enforceable supply chain labor rights agreement with trade unions or worker organizations;
(3) takes steps to ensure workplace environments in which its suppliers' workers are able to pursue alternative forms of organizing (e.g., worker councils or worker-management dialogues) where there are regulatory constraints on freedom of association; and
(4) provides at least two examples covering different supply chain contexts of how it improved freedom of association and/or collective bargaining for its suppliers' workers such as migrant workers (e.g., by taking action where suppliers impede workers' rights to freedom of association and/or collective bargaining or by engaging policy makers to improve respect for such rights).