Protecting the Rights of Migrant Workers in Hungary through Public Procurement

This Project aims to enhance the protection of migrant workers’ rights in the electronics supply chain in Hungary through public procurement. The Project is a collaboration between the Principal Investigator (PI), Dr Andrijasevic and the NGO, Electronics Watch (EW). EW is an independent monitoring organisation providing supply chain monitoring and assistance to over 300 public sector buyers including governments, local authorities and universities to ensure transparency and social responsibility relating to workers rights and safety in factories that make the electronic goods purchased by public institutions. This Project will achieve its objective of enhancing the protection of migrant workers’ rights in the electronics supply chain by: 1) building capacity of Hungary-based NGOs via a training on worker-driven monitoring; and 2) developing a practical guidance to EW’s public buyer affiliates via a Regional Risk Assessment.

The training and risk assessment will allow EW affiliates to identify risks to migrant workers and other workers in the electronics industry in Hungary and will enable EW to use the leverage of public buyers to drive remediation of workers rights violations. In addition to the civil sector and EW-affiliated public buyers as its immediate beneficiaries, the Project will also benefit migrant workers by creating safe communication channels between workers and local NGOs for workers to discuss and report workplace grievances. Building on a previous collaboration between the PI and EW that successfully enhanced the protection of migrant workers rights in the Czech Republic, the Project also aims to establish a durable collaboration between Dr Andrijasevic and EW that maximises the impact of research and creates strong basis for future partnerships.

Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries are currently at the centre of scholarly and policy concerns about migrant workers labour rights violation as several Asian multinational firms, well-known for poor working conditions and treatment of workers, have localised their production plants in CEE. Hungary, next to the Czech Republic, is the main hub of electronics assembly in the EU, with the electronics industry employing 176,000 workers and generating 28% of total exports. With additional investment in battery production, Hungary will also be critical for the electric vehicle supply chain in CEE and therefore increasingly important to public procurement in the UK given its promise to promote a green economic recovery, for example ending sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles by 2030. Information regarding specific suppliers and factories that make the ICT hardware they buy has already been provided to EW thus initiating the procedure of addressing worker rights issues in Hungary . With expertise in worker-driven monitoring and supplier engagement, and extensive experience in forced labour and migrant worker recruitment issues, EW can quickly move to detect risk and develop effective remedial action in collaboration with stakeholders.

In addition to its in-country networks, the Project will draw on EW’s worker-driven monitoring methodology, already deployed in 10 major electronics production regions. The methodology whereby workers initiate EW-led investigation through complaints and subsequently train local NGOs to lead on monitoring activities, has been widely acknowledged for its impact. For example, the UK Government recognised the value of the EW model of independent monitoring and supplier engagement in its 2020 Modern Slavery Statement, and the EU highlighted the collaboration between EW and one of its Spanish affiliates as a “good practice case” in its 2020 publication, Making Socially Responsible Public Procurement Work. Drawing on EW’s expertise in worker-driven monitoring, social responsibility in public procurement, and supplier engagement combined with PI’s knowlege of migrant worker recruitment and labour control regimes in electronics supply chains in CEE, the Project will extend the application of EW worker-driven methodology model to Hungary with the aim of mitigating harm and preventing labour rights violations.

The two main Project’s outputs are as follows:

1. Training on worker-driven monitoring for monitoring partners in Hungary
2. Regional Risk Assessment

The Project will be carried out to the highest standards of ethics. Both the PI and EW maintain the highest standards of ethical, professional and scholarly integrity and are experienced in mitigating potential health and safety issues that might arise from research and/or monitoring activities. To ensure that everyone involved in the Project maintains the same hight standards of ethics, EW will train monitoring partners in the protocols and procedures it has devised to maintain data security and protect the safety of workers.

We do not envisage any significant risks given the positive past experience of PI-EW collaboration. However, given the variety of activities and number of participants, we will manage the risks pertaining to potential coordination difficulties by assigning the role of Project coordinator to a EW staff member. As long as the present pandemic continues there is also a risk that travel to Hungary to conduct in-person trainings will not be possible. However, we anticipate that trainers and Project participants will be vaccinated prior to conducting training. Our fall-back plan would be to conduct the training remotely, on-line, as EW has been doing during the pandemic. The final risk pertains to identifying the ‘right’ monitoring partners in Hungary. We will mitigate this risk by outlining the clear criteria for selection, namely experience in advocacy, monitoring and/or conducting research on labour rights in the manufacturing sector in Hungary, and capacity to reach and build relations with communities of electronics workers.

The ongoing legacy of this Project will be that EW will include the electronics sector in Hungary in its regular monitoring scope, ensuring that future monitoring and related compliance activities will be funded by EW affiliates through their annual dues.