Supporting Migros’ Suppliers in Taiwan to Strengthen Responsible Recruitment

Migros, a Swiss retail company is focusing on building the capacity of its Taiwan-based suppliers on the most salient human rights and compliance risks, in particular risks related to forced and child labour. To ensure that the products come from suppliers that offer their employees safe and socially acceptable working conditions, Migros implements various social standards along its value-added chain and expects their suppliers to abide by the BSCI Code of Conduct. To support this, The Centre was engaged to develop training material for Taiwanese suppliers and facilitate pilot training and an action planning workshop with four first-tier factories in Taiwanese. The project kicked off in February 2024.

Migros identified migrant worker risks as a focus area in Taiwan. Hence, the training material developed by The Centre aims to improve the recruitment and management practices of both local and foreign migrant workers.  It also addresses the conflict between international and national law. The half-day training and half-day workshop was conducted at the site between 23 April to 29 April 2024. A total of 16 factory staff members, especially from the HR, finance and production staff, were trained on preventing and remediating forced labour and child labour using the human rights due diligence approach (HRDD).

Despite the factories having solid human rights due diligence measures in place, they did commit to further improving the company’s policies and processes for recruitment and worker management as a result of the training. None of them identified child labour risks in their respective factory. During the action plan workshop, the only forced labour risks found were related to the hiring of local temporary workers, especially if they are hired through recruitment agencies. Also, there is a gap in issuing written work contracts to local workers, which is not mandatory in Taiwan, but the factories agreed to align their approach with international standards.

“We are keen to establish a friendly environment to enable workers to freely communicate or give feedback on our policies,” said one of the supplier representatives during the workshop.

We are currently providing monthly (May – September 2024) follow-up support on their action plan remotely, which covers some of the above-mentioned gaps as well as recruitment and other relevant policy and document reviews. The project is expected to conclude in October 2024.

It is the key focus of Migros to protect the human rights of workers and mitigate corresponding salient risks in our supply chain. Taiwan is one of the areas with overseas migrant workers in common; we found there is a need to enhance our Taiwan factory's awareness of migrant workers’ rights and corresponding recruitment practices. Thanks to The Centre for Child Rights and Business for organising the project; we did observe the enhancement of factories’ awareness and practices throughout the process.” Migros