5.3 Grievance Mechanism
About the data
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.
Methodology
The company takes steps to ensure a formal mechanism to report a grievance to an impartial entity regarding labor conditions in the company's supply chains is available to its suppliers' workers and their legitimate representatives. The company ensures that the mechanism is effective across its supply chains. The company:
(1) takes steps to ensure a formal mechanism to report a grievance to an impartial entity regarding labor conditions in the company's supply chains is available to its suppliers' workers and their legitimate representatives;
(2) takes steps to ensure that the existence of the mechanism is communicated to its suppliers' workers;
(3) takes steps to ensure that its suppliers' workers or their legitimate representatives are involved in the design and/or performance of the mechanism, to ensure that the workers trust the mechanism;
(4) discloses data about the practical operation of the mechanism, such as the number of grievances filed, addressed, and resolved, or an evaluation of the effectiveness of the mechanism; and
(5) provides evidence that the mechanism is available and used by workers below the first tier in its supply chains.