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Why didn't you go? Doesn't. Okay, folks.

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Alright, might as well go ahead and get started with just some minute or so Michelle just let me know that it's just a minute or so.

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Michelle just let me know that Katherine Nostovsky had got her days mixed up and that Katherine Nostovsky had got her days mixed up and that's why she wasn't here for the earlier session.

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Just have to click on yours.

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Okay, thank you. Okay, so this is bit of a bookguard and that this book has just come out in the last 6 weeks.

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On the title of the book, Sitching Government towards Transaction of Dusty Democracy by myself and Yulie Analytica from the University of Oxford.

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I put the book cover up there not just as a blatant ad but also because of the point of the picture actually gets across a lot of what we're discussing in the book because in many ways this this was a picture taken at a Shulia labor protest in Bangladesh in 2,018 when a number of

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trade union leaders, 2,018 when a number of trade union leaders were in 2,018 when a number of trade union leaders were rounded up in a number of trade union leaders were rounded up in jail because wildcat and non union strikes were taking place in factories, whilecat, non-union strikes were taking place in

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factories were taking place in factories in Dia Shulia suburb of Dhaka.

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Essentially they were trying to speak to brands and consumers rather than essentially speaking to employers about the unfair treatment of the trade unionists.

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And so it's in the, so terms of introducing a paper, the, the book is a culmination of 10 years looking at the bangladesh accord and also, years looking at the Bangladesh Accord and also the Bangladesh Accord and also the Ethical Trade Initiative's social dialogue program which were launched as a response to the

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RI have got GFAs within the garment sector like industrial in Detect they all have their individual company code of conduct.

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They all have their individual company code of conduct as they all have their individual company code of conduct as well which I think often trumpet code of conduct as well which I think often trumps of conduct as well, which I think often trumps the agreement in the way they approach their transnational supply chain governance.

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See it as a very heavy top-down approach to technical code of conduct implementation and question the project was very much looking at was can principle of industrial democracy be extended into supply chain?

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So be talking about challenges of transnational and democracy in supply chain context, outlining the initiatives if I'll mainly talk about the accord but if I have time I'll also talk about the ETI initiative and then what we see as being the implications coming from that.

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So the project itself ran from late 2,013 to 2,019 into response to ran up as a disaster 10 years ago in April where 1,100 workers were killed in the Shavar suburb of Dhaka in Bangladesh.

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We carried out 143 interviews in Bangladesh with it by our countries with trade unionists.

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You brand reps, employers, NGOs, workers, other parties and the like and we focused on these 2 experiment more seniors experiments in transnational industrial democracy.

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I think on the other part we the title of the book is like stitching labor stitching governance for labor right very much played on the idea of it being being in the garment sector but also there's 2 other means of stitching there.

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First of all is that obviously we've published a number of these of the chapters or earlier versions of the chapters where articles that we then reworked and the second element is that this wasn't funded through a large research fund, and we got 10,000 here, 5,000 here, and we very much stitched the project together based on

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what resources we were able to get at a particular time. So we thought, so that was very much the app when we were talking about the idea of stitching, it was very much seen as part of the project design as well.

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And in terms of talking about the challenges for transnational industrial democracy, we think about the principles of industrial democracy based around the recognition that those were competing interests in the organization need to be involved in its governance that people, workers as well as the owners of property have the right to have representation within governance and the like.

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And Very much the idea of industrial democracy based around the explicit recognition of the role of workers and worker representatives in advancing the interest of governance rather than the CSR approach which is cuddly management in representatives.

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Knowing what is in the best interests of workers. And in terms of when we're talking about industrial democracy, we looked at like people like Wolfgang Strike and the idea of industrial citizenship with the base around not just being representational enterprise or national level but also the sector level.

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When the problems though that we see with the literature on industrial democracy is that it's based around very much for this conception of national economies not based around the reality of supply chains which are deliberately put you in a sector like garments have been deliberately constructed to take advantage of where workers have got the worst representation the worse pay the

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worse standards so that multinationals can make the most profit. And it's big, so how does this idea of industrial democracy and global supply chains fit together is a core tension that we discuss in the early part of the book.

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Now speaking of the actual issues themselves the Bangladesh your core now I'm not sure how familiar people are with it.

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Some are familiar, others aren't. To me I think everybody should know everything about it because it's been my life for 10 years and came into existence on the fifteenth of May, 2,013 and it was initially a five-year agreement that was legally binding between 200 brands and 2 global union federations as the

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signatories and 4 NGOs as witness signatories. And to be fair, the agreement actually came into existence because of a lot of the leg work of the NGOs rather than the unions and the NGO stood aside to let the unions be the representative of bodies.

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Particularly that was the clean close campaign and the workers rights consortium carried out a huge amount of work.

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Was extended by 3 years in 2,018 to 2,021 brought to an end by a court case where Bangladeshi factory owner challenged its right to operate in Bangladesh and now the efforts between industrial, Uni-global and about 180 brands trying to transform it into

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the international accord to bring a similar approach to Pakistan, Sri Lanka, India and Morocco.

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The actors involved 200 Bret plus brands, 2 global union federations, 6 Bangladeshi unions who were affiliates of industrial at the time were signatories and then as other unions affiliated to industrial all day became part of it.

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For witness signature, 4 angels the witness signatory and the ILO sitting in an independent chair.

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But very controversially, the Bangladeshi employers and the government of Bangladesh were both excluded from the arrangement and the unions rationale for this was It was like it would be like putting the fox in charge of the hen house and it's an actual quote from one of the trade unionists.

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The NGOs, however, had a very different rationale. So like the Workers Rice Consortium Clean Close campaign we're saying they're not the Bangladeshi's aren't the real employers, the real employers are the multinational.

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So there's 2 different logics but the government and the employer were excluded. Unions and NGOs acted as mutually reinforcing coalition as one of our arguments and the employers very much objects of government with significant pushback in Bangladesh involving the legal case, the government, the prime minister and the like.

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Read the book to get full details on that element. The idea about the accord is transnational industrial democracy.

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What features do we see as it being transactions? First of all, a new departure and laborer John Nash labor government.

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First of all it involved global union federations of both Ben's supply chain with Uni Global who organized in the retail sector particularly strong in the likes of H and M in the text continental European retailers and an industrial at the manufacturing end.

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Secondly, the feature of legal enforceability against signatory brands that the brand signed a clause saying that if there's a dispute it goes to the International Court of Arbitration and the rulings of that court then become enforceable in the home country in which the company is registered.

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And that was seen as being pretty powerful. The labor actors particularly spoke about that however brand said if we wanted to we could have tied it the whole process up and not for years by going through the courts and challenging and we've got more we got more money or less.

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We got more money to pay lawyers than the unions and NGOs do was sort of their eyes.

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They were more dismissive of it, but it still was a key feature. And the removal of OSH is a factor of competition between brands through this collective approach.

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The 2 key features of the accord we saw very much very much the idea of like collective auditing of factories against the accord standards but on the other hand worker voice through the creation of OSH committees within the within the factories in Bangladesh.

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Do we very much argue in the book that's an attempt to build institutional of industrial citizenship and the accord acting as sector type agreements based on this collective approach of brands and the unions and then also work participation at the factory level through participation committee.

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And very much the idea was seen as the part the enforcement power was enforcement power through brands rather than through government or the like which creates obviously contradictions and a picture here on the left on right story right at the slide or actually a group which when we went to meet the NGWF.

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This is a group of workers who walked off site that day and were having a meeting. We were invited along to meet this group of workers because they had walked off due to concerns over implementation of aspects of the accord.

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No, 3 min, OK, quickly. This in terms of success or argument, on the left-hand side, remediation levels of first level faults that were spotted went up to about 93% by about 2,018, 2,019.

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And the other thing that's interesting is that on the right hand side the graph is that Collect complaints filed by worker safety went up very dramatically even though deaths And injuries declined very dramatically.

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So we thought this is an element that workers were willing to use the accord as a mechanism of work or voice, work or representation in in order as a governance mechanism.

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Now skip over to that one now as I said. So thinking the conclusion very much the idea is that our arguments are that response Rana Plaza has seen initiatives being started which have been guided by principal industrial democracy like the accord but we see it very much as a market-driven model of democracy and this far from perfect.

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But like the argument of Danny Rodriguez about second best institutions that it's not an ideal world it's a the supply chain world is very complex in that in this circumstances second best institutions are better than no institutions functioning would be the argument we put forward.

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New actor constellations in terms of representative alliances, particularly between unions and NGOs who are cooperating rather than contesting the space.

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Elements of transnational co determination with standards being determined at national level and also workplace representation through work or workplace representation through worker representatives on OSH committees.

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Market-based representation through work girl representatives on the West Hage committees. Market-based features enforcement through the economic power of the brands.

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And leverage of consumer pressure against brands out the reality whether that's real or apparent but very much brands sought himself as that being a fear factor and built around not challenging the supply chain model.

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It's definitely not a model of challenging the supply chain outsourcing but one of ameliorating the worst edges of it.

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And in terms of limitation, very much external actors imposition of voice. Big problem, big deficit, the lack of inclusion of national actors and institutions and we think in the international court that's going to be a bigger feature of it in its implementation than 4 new countries and also the issue about being disaster driven to what extent does that lead

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to responses by multinationals that wouldn't have happened in their absence? And with that, I'll stop.

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Thank you.

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Let's see. Okay.

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All right.

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Michelle, I'm sorry, I bounced over. All right, strategies for tackling GBHV in the workplace.

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Thanks for cooling up my typo. No, that not at all. Thanks for that. This is some early work that Mike and I have been doing in our broader work that Mike and I have been doing in our broader work on the Global Union Federations about this particular work on the Global Union Federations about this particular little group

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of the Global Union Federations about this particular little group of agreements that the IUF has come through around sexual harassment.

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OK, I'll get started. Really, this really began and I mean it it links very nicely to Jimmy's paper because it began with reflections about the purposes of GFAs.

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And other sorts of agreement making and you know the most obvious these sorts of organisations are about the global unions trying to make space for themselves not just as organizations of unions but as unions trying to create a for themselves, not just as organizations of unions, but as unions, trying to create a bugany arena for themselves at the international level.

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And a lot of the debates in the literature are pretty down in the trenches about how effective they are, how detailed they are, how much they're implemented and whether, you know, about the role of the affiliates and how affiliates can make or break a GFA.

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But where interested in maybe digging a little deeper and seeing if there are other purposes to these sorts of agreement making and we thought that these these sexual harassment agreements are quite a good example of that.

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So, I mean, most of you in the room, I don't have to go through this, but just in case anyone doesn't know, the global framework agreements, they started life as international framework agreements and they're a form of volunteeristic regulation because as we were discussing yesterday national industrial relations systems are really still very national and many people

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still imagine that at least jurisdiction and the ability to actually compel is largely still in the national space. The Lily GSa's and I'm in Jamie, you've stayed me here today?

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I haven't got my glasses on. Jamie and others, Michael Ficture and so on, did a lot of work looking at GFAs and their scope.

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But most of them were broad in scope and actually applied to sort of labor rights in general and not to specific policy and governance domains.

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And that's why we think this particular group of agreements, not all of them are called at GFAs, are interesting.

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And they they're interesting because they are a notable exception. They hone in really closely on sexual harassment and they come up with ways of trying to manage that within global supply chains.

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So in this very early paper, I'm just going to walk you through why the AUF embarked on this course of action and what protections these agreements actually do provide for workers.

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So like GFS in general, these particular agreements tend to be short and simple. And as I said before, the more general GFAs were very much about making space for union engagement at different levels of the supply chain.

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As well as getting on the ILO core labor standard bandwagon. And over time they've become more complicated but as I mentioned before they're really still voluntary and it really depends so much on how things work in the national jurisdictions and this comes through very much in these ones on sexual harassment too.

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I'll talk a bit more about this later, but the take-up amongst affiliates and the sort of engagement with it often depends on what the national labor law says about sexual harassment.

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Is there law that compels companies to deal with it or is it something that is a blank space in legislation?

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So those sorts of national interests still play in very firmly. But back to the big Gen GFAs just before we get to the small specific ones, I quite like this quote from industrial on what a good GFA looks like.

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Covering all of the operations, guaranteeing a commitment to treat unions positively and that is another very important factor of them as a general category but also containing effective mechanisms.

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And most of the criticisms of GFAs have referred to that third point. But the big issues are really about the specificity and then the problems of monitoring and implementation, which of course are the same problems in the CSR systems that Jimmy was talking about just a moment ago.

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And so basically the consensus is GFAs, they're not totally useless but they have limited effect at the industry or enterprise level unless they're accompanied by organising interventions.

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We did try to do a sum, a little count up. We're not too sure of these figures.

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So if anyone's got really firm figures on the number of GFAs from different guffs, we'd love to hear them.

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But in terms of the IUF, its history with broader GFAs is also interesting when we come to these sexual harassment agreements because they actually pioneered the GFAs in the late eighties when they negotiated at their first agreement with BSN which became denone.

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And The interesting thing though is they change their mind. Around 2,006 they issued a moratorium and said we're not doing this anymore.

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We think people are making too many of them, we don't think they're serious enough and it's actually too resource intensive to make a GFA work to have more than one or 2 of them.

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And the drawbacks as Ron Oswald told Mike and I when we interviewed him in 2 15 were those that ineffective GFAs actually create a form of virtue signaling for the companies rather than giving the unions anything hugely resource intensive and also that like issue of a lack of ownership by members and an issue of enforceability.

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So the other interesting thing is that these GFAs, even though the IUF has a long history of talking about sexual harassment.

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It's been one of the few gusts to really deal with this topic for a very long time.

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But the Done GFA didn't really talk about harassment. It did talk a lot about gender equality and from that aspect it was a good agreement in this little area but actually it just noted that harassment is a form of discrimination, nothing else.

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But what's interesting is, remember I just mentioned the moratorium of 2,006 in 2,013 onwards they signed all these more specific agreements about sexual harassment which seems a bit odd when the organisation has basically said that these sort of organizations aren't useful.

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So for those of you who are interested in the sexual harassment elements, I'll stop talking about GFAs now and start telling you about the agreements themselves.

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So basically, as you can see there, these are the agreements and the first was with Jakarta, which is a banana company.

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Those of you in the Americas will know it more than we do. You know, Levi is really important and then more recently you can see there's been much more of an emphasis on tourism and hospitality.

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These are really quite interesting in terms of a number of elements and we did a close read through them and came up with a couple of these sorts of tables where we look at the scope of them in this case and you can see that you know all of them obviously covered employees, sexual harassment perpetrated by employees, but a lot of them actually looked at quite a lot

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of other kinds of groups within the supply chain and interestingly I think the last 2 columns are really telling.

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The ones the 2 that covered clients or customers and of course that's very important in the tourism and hospitality sector.

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And then the last column, countries with no IUF affiliate because of course if you start thinking about affiliates as being a really important implementation mechanism.

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How does a Guff even start to get implementation in a country where they don't have any or they have bad ones but that's a different topic.

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The other thing we looked at is how much they embedded into national standards because I'm interested to think about the process of diffusion of norms around gender based violence and harassment in general and sexual harassment in particular.

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And as you can see, they all do, except for the I'm the Chiqueda first one.

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You know, Late of the C 190 reference and then the others have referred also to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and then the others have referred also to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the OECD guidelines.

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And if you're interested in the guidelines, Mike and I have done quite a bit of work on those in other areas using the guidelines as a campaign mechanism.

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This other part of this table shows you the processes and mechanisms that are captured in the agreements. And you can see that Unilever is actually the strongest here.

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It covers all of them. And you can see that Unilever is actually the strongest here. It covers all of them.

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Now I have to note here Unilever industrial was also a signature signatory but people on both sides tell us that I you have did all the work on that.

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So you can see the things that we thought were important is whether they had joint awareness, raising and training, joint development of procedures, monitoring and working committees, regular reviews, reporting mechanisms, sanctions and protection.

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But it's interesting. I think that pattern is quite telling in itself, depending on the sector and the time of agreement.

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So the big question is where will these agreements make a difference? And this isn't something that can be answered yet because the early one the Chiquita one crashed and burned after a period and I'll tell you why in a minute and the old the newer ones are a bit too new to actually see.

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But what's interesting here is not so much whether it changes or for us at least, whether it changes the behavior of the companies, but what else do these agreements do?

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But before I get there, I'd like to talk a bit about some of the factors that I get there I'd like to talk a bit about some of the factors that do.

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But before I get there, I'd like to talk a bit about some of the factors that we think about when these things.

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And there's also what's been identified to us by interviews with stakeholders. And the first of course is where the management is open and whether it stays on side and changes in management changes in the individual people.

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Who are in management make a really big difference. If you have a champion at a high level. The the head of Donone when the BSN when the first agreement was done, Barbara Budin described her as described him as the Red Baron.

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She's reckoned he was more socialist than half the unions. And that really helped get that agreement through.

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And in that case, she said the affiliates were actually dragged kicking and screening on the bits about, yeah, quite a lot of that aspect of that agreement.

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There's also personal history in Rio, which is a Spanish hotel chain was interesting here. The woman, it's a private company, it's not listed.

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The woman who runs it, dad owned it and she started working from the ground up so she had done housekeeping she had done kitchen work she had done all these jobs where of course as a woman she had experienced sexual harassment or at very at least seen it.

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So from the IUF perspective that that agreement which is quite new is very has a lot of potential because of the non public nature of the company and the particular commitment of the CEO.

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I mentioned before changes in Chakida. It's interesting all these agreements were actually made with companies headquartered in Europe, which those of us who know about GFAs doesn't think it's way.

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And that includes Jakaa because Chiquita is actually owned by the Germans for a brief time, because Chiquita was actually owned by the Germans for a brief time and that happens to coincide with the period then.

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A year later it was bought by the Brazilians and everything went down the tube. So that was a really big problem with the Chiquita agreement.

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And then as I said before, it's partly about whether affiliates think issue the issue is important and a really telling example here is the Swedish unions really don't care about the Sadexo agreement.

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They think that the legislative arrangements in Sweden give them enough coverage on this so they're not actually engaging at all.

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And then of course it's the bigger issue which pertains to GFAs as well, which is whether affiliates have the power to pursue these agreements even if they're in place.

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But the interesting thing about this set of agreements and it really sets them apart from GFAs as a larger category is that because of the very embodied personal nature of the issue, women get very mobilised around it and the people within the IUF who engaged with this would have pointed to examples in Pakistan in Africa where women really got to be

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in their bonnet about this issue. They wanted to pursue it and as a result they actually pushed their way into union structures in a way they hadn't before and the IUF people we've spoke to about this and we will interview some of the affiliates to confirm this in the next stage of the research but they would say that actually

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it creates momentum for other sorts of changes within the union as a result of that. I'll just finish with a few quotes from our interview data that really illustrate the points I've tried to make here and the first is about this CEO of you and I asked so you think it mattered that she was a woman and as you

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can see it really is about that personal history in that case. In terms of being a broader strategy, this was a great example.

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This Pakistan case. And I mean part of the IUF broader strategy has said well sexual harassment is very much about broader issues of equality if women are doing the same jobs they get the same pay they get the same whatever, sexual harassment is less likely and the Pakistani affiliates a test to that.

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They are doing the same kind of work they are less likely to be harassed. The challenges in change of leadership.

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This is referring to the Chiquita case. I'd notice here the mention to Sue, who Longley who's now the General Secretary.

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Of course it's interesting. It's it's also about the Metoo movements and also about a lot of other things but it's not an accident I think that once she took over that role we had some more of these agreements but on the other side of course as I mentioned before the change of directors is really important.

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And of course implementation requires work and this is a problem again. It is a comment that does extend to GFAs and other forms of agreement, including including things like the Bangladesh Accord more largely it really does require at its heart negotiation between local management and local unions.

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You create that you create the space that they need to set up the mechanism that can't be done at an international level.

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And of course not all unions are on board. And the interesting thing about this is on an issue like sexual harassment, the IUF at least, and I think there are affiliates, see this as a way of actually making the union care.

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So changing the balance of power within affiliates to make space for this issue, this very important issue that most unions really haven't addressed seriously before.

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Okay. I don't know what I'm doing here there. Okay.

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All right, thanks very much. This is a bit of a Mike and Michelle show. We should have scheduled these slightly differently, so it's Eminem.

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And this is another paper that we've been working on and thinking through, still again under construction. It comes out of I guess an intersection between 2 ongoing research multi-year research agendas one as Michelle mentioned is on global union federations understanding these let's say quite weird union organizations in terms of how their positioned

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as global organizations thinking about them as strategic actors and the other research project was looking at garment manufacturing industry in key production countries particularly in Indonesia, Cambodia and Myanmar and the paper I'm presenting today we will draw on some examples to illustrate the issues we're talking about from fieldwork research that we

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did in Cambodia and Myanmar. So it's this sort of confluence between these to research projects.

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A little bit like Jimmy's comments. It kind of has happened rather than by design. It's sort of has happened rather than by design.

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It's sort of these projects have intersected in really interesting ways we think. Okay, so the focus of the paper that I'm presenting here is on the specific issue of the living wage and particularly the living wage in the regional context of Southeast Asia.

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I don't want to spend a lot of time on this slide because again I think pretty much all of you in this room will be familiar with the kind of problems around inadequate wages and inadequate social protection in developing countries in Southeast Asia but obviously in industries like garment manufacturing as Jimmy said which are integrated into global

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supply chains in ways that often, you know, have adverse outcomes for workers in terms of social protection and wages.

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And clearly this is a domain in which there's been a tremendous amount of activism from NGOs, from unions, from media and a number of different stakeholders in this space.

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So our interest is really just to think about what are the strategic responses or initiatives to this problem of the living wage.

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What's the role of global union federations in responding to this challenge? And we've done some work in other papers on this question of living wage.

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In fact, it's referenced this morning about the Asia floor wage. Alliance, but we've also done a book chapter on living wages in the Southeast Asia region.

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We've just tried to think about different kinds of initiatives and the kind of institutional logics that inform those particular initiatives to deal with the problem of living wage.

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Now this is a big table which I'm not going to go through so don't worry about that but basically this is our way of mapping out a kind of typology of different kinds of responses from NGO driven responses to union NGO responses.

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Unions unions and brands multi-stakeholder initiatives and brands themselves so you can already see there's a lot going on in the space.

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Now if we just look at the brands themselves. The big corporations like H and M, Unilever also have this.

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Many of them now have so called living wage commitments. So that's the corporate road of kind of self-regulation, self-reporting. This is why and how we care.

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This is how we're factoring it into our sourcing model but it's obviously like codes of conduct.

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Very flawed if you actually think about the weaknesses there and there's a kind of where you think dominant logics with all of these initiatives which can be about collaboration if it's something like a brand commitment.

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It's about collaboration between lead firms and suppliers in better compliance and delivery of living wages. If we think about other an initiatives, there are dynamics we think of, collaboration, technical fixes to actually deal with the problem of actually calculating what a living wage is in an industry like the garment industry, but also contestations.

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So we've got these different kind of logics in play across these different initiatives. So what I'm talking about today is just focusing in on the union side of this and particularly in terms of the role of global unions.

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Now before I talk about Global Union Federations and particularly Industrial, which is the Sexual Global Union Federation that covers garment manufacturing workers.

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It's worth acknowledging that this is also a space in terms of global unions that the International Trade Union Confederation also tries to occupy and sort of represent itself on and that's in lobbying international financial institutions in participating in different kinds of global dialogues.

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But also communicating to its national affiliates across all of its regions. About why as you can see here the world needs to pay rise why we need living wages but the way it frames this issue is as you can see around improving minimum wage systems and minimum wage outcomes.

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Now as many of you would know the ITUC kind of set itself up as a bit of a norms entrepreneur as participating in this dialogues to foreground particular agendas but its capacity to actually effectively connect these sort of broad, discursive campaigns to real action on the ground is very questionable.

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I can see Kim looking at me like loving to jump up and say things. But so our focus isn't so much on the ITC but it's worth acknowledging that if we talking about global unions in the living wage this is also a kind of space in which there's campaigns and discourse produced by the

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ITUC. So as I said before, our focus is on industrial as the sectoral Global Union Federation covering garment manufacturing workers and it's worth acknowledging that industrial if you don't know as a global union federation came about through the merger between 3 formally separate global union.

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Entities. One was ICAM in terms of chemical and mining workers. The other one was the International Metal Workers Federation and finally you have as you can see here the international textile garment leather workers federation.

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Which had a very long name. And so the ITG LWF before industrial existed was active in this space.

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Now I think Jimmy is right, NGOs. Bigger noises in campaigning but they certainly were engaging at country level with affiliates.

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They had some capacity to engage with brands and they had their own living wage strategy which was kind of a basket of goods approach.

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Let's do surveys on what workers need for a living wage. Let's talk to brands about how we could actually try and deliver that.

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Let's do some campaigning in that space. But when industrial came into being there was a view, a kind of internal critique essentially that this model was flawed because it's piecemeal.

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It's like brand by brand, factory by factory. There's no real overall governance effect.

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In actually improving living wages in the industry. And so, Industrial's intervention. In an attempt to collaborate with brands is was to develop this initiative at action collaboration transformation.

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And this was an attempt to bring together big brand buyers and retailers in the industry. Together with Industrial to form this initiative to promote industry based collective bargaining in the garment manufacturing sector in a number of key producer countries.

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Jimmy's done all my work here. Basically the initiative comes directly out of the Bangladesh Accord.

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So in industrial got a lot of leverage with brands after Rana Plaza and through the process of creating the accord.

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It's also important to say they developed personal relationships and trust. With lot of these brands and their representatives which enabled them to open the door to this Act initiative.

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But Act is a much smaller slice of the participants, the brands and retailers that participate in the Bangladesh Accord.

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At the moment there's only 19. Now many of them are big. Brands of retailers, H and M.

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Primark, Inditex. They are all parties but they kind of the slice of the Bangladesh accord that were I think most committed and probably had developed the best relationships with industrial through that process.

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So the idea of Act is essentially To use this brand-based leverage to bring together suppliers in these key producer countries.

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With the employer associations. With the affiliated unions of industrial and with governments to say Why don't we do something about this industry that actually covers the whole field?

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That in a sense as you can see here. Takes, wages and actually, deals with that problem.

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And there's another quote here. Basically it's a model which is a kind of very old idea but a good idea.

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Let's take wages out of competition. Let's deal with it as an industrial matter and actually raise the floor for everyone.

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But the innovation here is trying to use the brand based leverage to coordinate and bring the actors together at country level in key producer countries.

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And you can see that in this quote from a policy officer from industrial that We interviewed for this particular study that support from the top is driven to the national level setting up a structure for IR at that national level.

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And the idea here, and this is Again, pretty parallel with what Jimmy was saying is you're potentially there maybe can start to deal with the problem of living wages through industry based bargaining but also create a dialogue mechanism to deal with other issues like Yeah, the effects of AI and other things that industry is going to need to deal with down

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the line. So this factory by factory approach doesn't work. Need to have coordination. We need to drive that down to the national level.

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Now, Michelle and I have first heard about Act I think in 2,015 we were doing a lot of interviews with Guffs.

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And I don't know, I wouldn't quite say we were sold on it, but we could see the logic of this as a solution to the problem of the industry.

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At the same time I think we straightaway started saying that how would this actually work in Cambodia or how would it actually work in Bangladesh or in Myanmar or many other countries in terms of the structures of industrial relations that exist.

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I think that is something that the participants within Act and within our industrial themselves know. So for instance if we look at Cambodia Industrial has 10 affiliates in Cambodia.

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Some of those affiliates are very closely aligned with the ruling party. Some are a little bit closer to the political opposition and many are independent.

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And as you can see here. They all hate each other. Now that's not a new thing, I mean most unions hate each other, let's be honest in terms of how they deal with each other and they find ways of getting over that.

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But it is certainly a challenge. You can see here this idea of to actually coordinate unions themselves is a real challenge and the idea here, you know, does the industrial have the capacity to get them in the room and convince them you have a common interest here.

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There's a there's an opportunity here that can be leveraged in terms of this brand-based leverage to actually deal with this problem of wages through industry-wide collective bargaining.

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And another quote from the regional secretary, I think even more pointed, just saying, you know, it's such a challenge in a country like Cambodia having co operation, just getting a joint statement, just negotiating a joint common position takes so much time and effort.

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And regional secretary industrial is not permanently based in a country like Cambodia. So Gusts kind of circulate through these countries as well, which is also an issue in terms of actually cementing these changes.

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So our idea with this paper is basically to look at these case studies of what happened with Act in particular country context.

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And if we look at Act in Cambodia, you can see in this image on this slide, this is actually, I just grabbed this in terms of a screenshot from Acts description of As you can see here, it's fourth round of country based consult consultations in Cambodia in September in 2,000 and

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18. And act in terms of these country-based consultations did bring together brand representatives. Industrial, the affiliates.

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Government, high level government officials from Cambodia and GMAC, the Garment Manufacturers Association of Cambodia.

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They did meet in these rooms, they had a dialogue about this idea. The idea wasn't rejected but we don't see any big buy in from any of those actors.

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No, locally. So the kind of willingness to really invest in that as implementing a national level wasn't really there.

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And I think it's a number of reasons for that. Obviously one is union fragmentation and competition which I've already mentioned.

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Another one is the weak institutionalisation of collective bargaining in a country like Cambodia. It's all about the minimum wage determination process.

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Now Cambodia is different to other producer countries because it actually has a high rate of unionisation.

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I click to bargaining doesn't really function in the way that we would think of it in countries like Australia.

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So that's a tremendous challenge to you know go from Very little experience in really robust effect to Barney to go into industry-wide collective bargaining in that country context.

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And remember the state as well may have had some interest in this as resolving problems like strikes in the sector, but there are other solutions for a state, particularly an authoritarian state like Cambodia, IE.

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Destroying independent unions and subverting their power and promoting government aligned unions. So that's The short story in Cambodia is what happened with Act?

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Nothing much. There's nothing really to report in terms of achievements from Act. Very quickly in Myanmar what happened again country based consultations.

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But in Myanmar, this was at a phase where Myanmar was in a moment of democratic experimentation that's say quasi democratic experimentation But you have a country where unions are forming, but also employer associations are forming.

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Basically for the first time. So forget even collective bargaining, we just had the basic rudimentary formation of industrial relations actors that are coming into being.

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One of the interesting things and this will have to be a different paper because it's quite a long story that actually happened in Myanmar.

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Is the IWFM which is the national affiliate of Industrial. Was basically dealing all the time with dialogues on brands and development agencies about the garment industry in Myanmar and at 1 point they put their hand up and this was very directly communicated to us in interviews and said, you know what, we're sick of

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this. Time that's invested in all this dialogue when we go back to the factory our workers are getting fired unions are being smashed.

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Basic trade union rights are being denied. We want brand leverage to be applied to freedom of association principles and their enforcement of those freedom of association principles.

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So I think it's a very interesting story because it's about the agency of local unions. In these transnational spaces saying Forget all that, we want this And we want to use the leverage for that particular purpose.

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Kim's telling me to wind up, so I think I will. That's, I think I've covered most of those points already so I'll stop there.

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Thank you.

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All right, thank you. All right, next up is Dmitrius and he's going to be in from remote.

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So I believe I stopped sharing. On this so let's see what happens Okay, Dmitri, you're You're up.

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Thank you.

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If you go ahead, please.

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Hi everybody and I'm sorry I'm not there with you.

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We are too.

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Good to the beginning of this.

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Okay.

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I want to give a little bit of background about this particular project which has not gone as far as I would like it to be because for the same reasons I'm not able to be there with you all of you.

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Since the original proposal, I have reconnected with a collaborator. Linda Clarke at the University of Westminster and United Kingdom who has done significant work on global union organizations, HER and Malahat Sahin Dikman published a report for adapting Canadian work and workplaces on global and

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regional unions in the environment. I have completed a short volume on the origin and proliferation of just transitions in which global union organizations played the central role.

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And together with, Cora Liga, who has completed the dissertation work on global union organizations.

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Framework agreements in the environment. We're going to, create a proposal and invited proposal on, Global Union Organizations such as organizations and climate change.

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Now why global unions and climate? They provide a rich opportunity, to study transnational and international civil societal politics.

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They have a long and diverse history. As you all know. And they highlight the deep connections between civil societal state and corporate politics.

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Some of the limited literature on, global unions as organizations. There's a lot of literature on what they do and so on.

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We place that literature within the historical constitution of global union organizations as parts of global labor politics and the broader political economy.

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And I was familiar with the work by Michelle and Michael both, 2,015, 2,022 and what they're presenting.

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And the globalization and proliferation of just transitions is one of the most prominent examples.

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Of the mainstreaming of a union strategy during the history. With profound implications for the future of work.

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Just transitions has become very popular, very prominent in our days and it is easy for some people for many analysts who have been attracted by the concept.

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To forget the fact that this was really the result of a collaboration between global union organizations, particularly the ITUC and networks of national Labour environmentalists.

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In terms of the study of global unions, we take a somewhat historical approach. There was a great deal of, research on global unions as organizations.

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In the 19 seventies and a little bit before that in the past. But in the seventies because of the world company cancels but the proliferation of global framework agreements and other initiatives has have provided the renewed impetus.

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The, but and here, you know, I can, we can use your help. We feel that the literature on global unions as organizations and in relation to the environment is quite limited.

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Romans Felli did a very good study in 2,014 and we hope to build on that.

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And so our study of global unions places their climate environmental activities within the historical dynamics as organizations. So our research questions are what are the strategies of global union organizations towards climate change.

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Do they have a strategy towards climate change is a part of a broader social agenda and what is the nature of their strategy over time?

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And the second question is what are the impacts of these strategies? Are there strategies influencing those of affiliates?

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Is there say, let's say, purchase of environmental politics and just transitions by a affiliates, many of which have been skeptical, and arters that is affecting them.

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This is a global union organisations as organisations. In terms of data and method, we are going to be looking at or we have looked, I should say, a primary documents and secondary material since the late 19 nineties and also interviews with current and past participants some of which have been completed.

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Let me talk about the first one, global unions and environmental politics. A brief overview. There has been increasing engagement with sustainability starting in the 19 nineties.

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Silverman has produced, through very nice overviews in the early years of the millennium.

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Then global labor environmentalists grew significantly in the first decade or so of the millennium with the work of a sustained labor.

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A labor NGO from Spain that collaborated with the ITC and other global union federations.

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And then about 2,007 2,008, IT UC and collaborators adopted the just transition as a strategic intervention climate negotiations.

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And since 2,015 of course when it was included purely ceremonially in the preamble to the parish a court just transition has become.

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Kind of exploding term. While it's used in a variety of ways. Let me just move to the next slide.

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So what is our political scheme with respect to climate change? The first thing we want to look at is what is the breadth of the strategies in terms of geopolitical scale and social and ecological scope.

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We can discuss those more. During QA then we want to look at the depth of those strategies are they really emphasizing both social and environmental priorities or only social and what kind or perhaps what kind of environmental.

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Do global union organizations move beyond green transitions which are very attractive. The whole idea that there are so many green jobs is very attractive.

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Do they take seriously into account just green transitions? And finally, we will ask about the ambition of those strategies.

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Are they really, or are they transformative?

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No, the next question is whether in fact this. Role of a global union organization which led to climate has helped them become More like unions.

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We know that in the last 20 years it can be some very important developments. First of all, the organizational convergence, 2,006.

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But one of the things I recall very much in doing work on global framework agreements about 20 years ago is what I was told by people both at ITUC and what used to be the chemical union and what used to be industrial about their desire to be more like unions that is to do something beyond being a Confederate

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space largely controlled by dominant unions. There have been some examples of trying to be more like unions. The global works councils in the 19 seventies perhaps were one example, the effort of unions to come up with a comprehensive, generally accepted social close, maybe another example, global framework agreements.

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Clearly an effort to move away from CSR with mixed results. And climate change, in more recently.

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No, what about global unions as organizations? What is analytical scheme? We're asking whether as a result of climate change.

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As a result of their success in placing just transition on the global policy agenda is there any evidence that the climate politics and the rise of just transition have helped global union organizations become more organizational autonomous federal or centralized more like us as I said.

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But, being in theonomous organization organization does not necessarily mean that you have influence over affiliates.

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You can be a small economist organization with a specific task. That doesn't have any impact. So we're going to ask that as well.

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And 2. Close. We're going to look at internal explanations. Other is there viability in terms of the sectors involved?

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The political balances within in the capacity of global unions. The emergence and existence of policy entrepreneurs and networks, which is clearly the case in climate change.

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Also external explanations. Other opportunities in global policy making that global union organizations can exploit. Are there some key policy makers that play a role?

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And what is the attitude of states and capitals? Most likely these factors operate in historical combinations. And the fact the nature of the strategies global unions adopt.

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But in general, our approach fuses the historical structural with conjunctional dynamics. Thank you so much for listening to me and apologize for not being there.

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Thank you, Demetrius, and thank you all the presenters. Let's see first of all is Katherine Nostovsky online.

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I don't see her but let me check does not look like it. So we'll go ahead and go to questions.

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Now we have some fascinating stuff here. That talking about labor organizations and, how they're organized, are they effective and things like that.

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So I think there's room for a lot of interesting conversation if Jimmy you want to come up here.

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Andres, you want to get us started here?

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Of this environment. Do we have that? Could you give them the mic so people online can hear? This has really been an excellent set of pipers.

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And, and I, Mike, I want to start with the workers in Myanmar.

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And I think they have a point. That a lot of the international instruments focus on outcome. Or outcome rights or or standards.

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Rather than than rights or freedom of association and collective bargaining. And I think a lot of authoritarian regimes are willing to allow that rather than unions who are able to bargain freely because that's a political threat.

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So So I'm worried when the state is excluded in and that kind of bypasses the state rather than that challenging the state at a fundamental level and opening up space.

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Space for democracy. I'm interested in the question of the proliferation of unions and I just briefly want to mention what's happening in Les Sutu.

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In industrial did a lot of work and there's a strong garment industry in Lesotho.

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Industrial did a lot of work in Les City to bring union unity. There were 3 competing unions and they worked over a number of years.

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I got former enemies to work together and to join to form a new union. The year that I formed the new union there were 2 other split-off unions again and now they 3 3 3 competing unions again.

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And I think often these international instruments in a way perversely create. Opportunities for union proliferation and we use the word union here but are they mean sometimes they not unionsized like political entrepreneurs with an asshole.

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And and an international game to put it bluntly. I mean and and so I think we talk about union imperialism but we also have to talk about the kind of often quite I mean, we know that why people in the global south would want an asshole.

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It's a way to survive. But we also need to understand that there may be these consequences and how, and so the unions in the suit who often they fact they use the word we fax L.

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Now where the gap is, which is my which sources products from the Sutu and so rather than mobilizing workers.

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They fax LA and they claim the victory. In in the factory. Yeah, so I just I think there's a bit of a dark side here if we focus only on standards rather than than rights and real building associational power in the workplace with this kind of symbolic power stands in for real associational organizational power.

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Sorry, it's a bit of a ramble but. Somebody else who want to follow this up?

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How long is the same lines? Okay, you all want to go ahead and take that. I think Andreas has raised some very interesting points there.

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Well need the mic, you. You don't get to keep it. I'm sorry. Yeah, I completely agree with you, you know, essentially.

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So I think that's an interesting point about the kind of entrepreneurialism. I hadn't really thought about it in those terms but yes you do get proliferation.

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Of in labor NGOs, new unions, everyone's looking for resources, everyone's looking for legitimacy.

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So you have that sort of jockeying, you know, but industrial I'd say.

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At least in the countries in our study, I think they're a little bit careful about who they take on as affiliates, I think they're a little bit careful about who they take on as affiliates, but once you are an affiliate It's like you're stuck with them forever.

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So the problem with the industrial is they don't discard the useless unions, the corrupt unions and the pro government unions.

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They just continue working with them. And I think the idea is I do think it reflects a kind of particularly Eurocentric kind of view and so many ways of you know we can bring everyone together and see they have a common interest instead of understanding you know how politically divided many of these associations are.

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I might add a couple of things there. I was surprised Mike didn't tell the anecdote of when we were in the industrial office doing those interviews in 2 15.

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Yaki Reno was on the phone trying to get the Cambodian affiliates to stop killing each other.

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Like it was he came out and he was red in the face and he was hassled because it is a really big deal.

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As Mike has said, it is a very broad tent and the industrial national councils they've tried to start to build links between the and in some cases like in Indonesia early on that actually really helped overcome some of the big bridges but big gulfs between some of the government and textile unions actually.

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But what I wanted to actually mention was the Freedom of Association protocol in Indonesia which then there was an attempt to put into Myanmar as well.

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Well it was. But in the Indonesian case it was interesting because brands and suppliers signed on to freedom of association but the next step was supposed to be about wages and conditions and they wouldn't go there.

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So it's quite interesting. I mean Indonesia is not an authoritarian state. It has its challenges but it's not and that could be a bit different if you put it in Cambodia but I can't imagine the Cambodian government actually coming out.

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Formally against freedom of association that's much more as we've written on the authoritarian innovations in Cambodia, much more about using legalistic methods and No, it's not benign, they'll leave it failing to deal with infractions from from employers rather than actually officially forbidding freedom of association because of

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the international risk not to the brands in this case but to the state.

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I This leads to, I think, uncomfortable territory for somebody like me because as being somebody who was a vice chair of a national union you don't want to be criticising sister unions but one of the things that became apparent when going around Bangladesh at the start was you look at like the accord of originally 6 union

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signatories to the Bangladesh Accord and within a year of Rana Plaza there were 17 industrial affiliates and then that blossomed out to about 25.

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You might say that's good because unionization was going up and the like. There were there was an increase in factory unionization registration.

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No doubt. However, if you look at the figures that we got from the AFL CIO so but they actually were tracking, it's called RT standard, we're tracking how many of these actually had factory unions and there were a large number of those unions that had no factory unions, they had no solidarity

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members, but there were a significant number who were going up. And actually you could tell who were the entrepreneurs and who were unionists when you turned up at an event or you were staying in a hotel and there was an event on and you met the same people who were turning up at the event to become half of the unions.

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Whereas the there were union leaders who weren't you were never seen at these events because they actually were trying to organize and the like and literally had the scars of their body from when they were, when they were jailed and the like and the others had very nice suits.

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Now the the issue for me there is that Those unions and the late. Well. Sorry, Roy Romesh not said to us about in Bangladesh he said the problem there as well is the dependency on international donations rather than union affiliation fees union Jews.

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And that is something that people were talking about in the Soviet after the claptist Soviet Union in Russia as well, what was happening at international donations.

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Projects are set up to with the aid of organizing and the like but they still end up finding their way in the wrong way with some people and not others.

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There are genuine unions who are working very hard, but yes there are the entrepreneurs you talk about Andreas.

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Okay. Yeah.

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Okay, thanks everyone. Great presentations enjoyed the papers and my question is to Jimmy because I'm from Bangladesh.

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So my cushion is like when you did the interview and you were started. Have you like, I know there are many government industry unions, but have you found something like unions are kind of allied to government's interests so like some unions would probably speak for government and kind of settle behind the scene, that kind of things.

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And were there any of you found in other countries like in Indonesia?

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Yes, but as somebody who was in the UK labour movement for 10 years, the Labour movement for 10 years, the Labour Party is set up by Labour for Labour.

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So it is in the UK labour movement for 10 years. The Labour Party is set up by Labour for Labour.

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So it's a criticism I often hear from people from Bangladesh about I often hear from people from Bangladesh about the unions, they are political, they are affiliated to government parties and the unions, they are political, they are affiliated to government parties and the like.

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But that is, they are political, they are affiliated to government parties and the like. But that is why we have social democratic and labour parties and the like.

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But that's why we have social democratic and labour parties all over the world. And Yes, obviously like the unions in Bangladesh, there were some who were part of the Oami League for Bangladesh, there were some who were part of the Oami League for example, DNGWF is an affiliate to the Workers Party of

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Bangladesh is an affiliate to the Workers Party of Bangladesh which is part of the Wamiya to the Workers Party of Bangladesh which is part of the Wami League and part of the government.

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I That is not necessary. I don't see why people always raise that because that is part of the principle of why political unions are affiliated political parties.

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These political parties because of that type of nature that biggest unions are. Politic inherently political organizations.

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Let me offer a counter example and you can come to the author meetings critics later if you want to hear more about this but in Indonesia critics later if you want to hear more about this but in Indonesia's critics later if you want to hear more about this but in Indonesia when the authoritarian regime came in

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they tried to cut well they effectively cut the ties between political parties and unions and that meant that the union was totally domesticated and one of the great achievements of the posterior union movement has precisely been to re-engage in politics.

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So you know you certainly have unions that get captured politically. But I don't think the response to that is to say all political unionism is bad.

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We really need to look at different cases. And who's who's actually, well in Indonesia would say who's the puppet master is at the union or is it the party?

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And I think it's very quick in Asia, all through Asia, to really be very quick to condemn political unions when in fact we should be saying what are they using the police politics for?

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Yeah, like the high chubes on this section. I was made one last year. Yeah.

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Sophie Aussenbaum from the University of Disberg Essen in Germany and I have a question for Michelle.

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I was really pleased to see working on those specific GFAs because we have recently finished a project dealing with the NFL.

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And during that project, we also updated the database on TFAs. And we, of course, tumbled across those companies that have signed these specific GFAs dealing with sexual harassment.

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And I mean, it's a small group, but I think the majority of those companies had already signed a general GFA before.

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So and our impression is that this or those GFAs have, well, some kind of. Triggered a social dynamic that those companies are eager or at least willing to sign other transnational agreements.

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So my question would be, did you see something similar in your interviews the actors make some references to the older general GFAs was this kind of in a learning experience they had.

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Did this play any role?

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Well, I think the interesting thing here is what I was talking about with the moratorium, right?

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The fact that the IUF had kind of even let go of the GFAs it had signed.

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So I mean with Unilever obviously it had other other kinds of agreements but I don't think in all cases that's the driving factor.

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I think it's much more about Well, as I said, partly about the Metoo movement, there's been most of those agreements have been signed since 2,019 and that time is not an accident and if you look at the industries also in hospitality, the momentum there, IUF is trying to push further into

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hospitality. Some of these, they're trying to push into a number of the other hotels too with these sorts of agreements and some of them have tried to work around it by saying okay we won't sign the agreement and it won't be surprised where these hotels are based.

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You can take a guess and I'll tell you if you're right or wrong. We'll work around it.

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We'll give everyone panic buttons so that if they go into the room and something happens they can press the panic button therefore we don't need an agreement.

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So I think actually as we know with GFAs more generally, being headquartered in Europe is actually the defining feature of whether most organizations are prepared to sign one.

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I haven't actually looked on the which ones previously had GFOs with the IUF but we certainly will.

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But I think that that is much more about

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Yeah, that sort of home country effect is really strong. And I mean in some countries You have the reversal and I think one of the Chile papers was referring to this maybe this morning.

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Like in Indonesia, Kafor has base, wasn't unionized in France at a time, it was unionized in Indonesia.

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So it doesn't always play out at the local level but I think in terms of the GFAs it certainly does.

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Yeah, just quickly. I don't think it's really interesting a good point. Yeah, I think there are one or 2 new ones there that are stand alone.

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There is no GFA which is interesting in and of itself and then there are others like so Dexo where basically I think the Iu's view is that had become a kind of moral bond.

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GFA or really wasn't working for them and so this more targeted approach is actually well we want to engage on this issue we want to have an impact and this is very important agenda for us as a global union which is driven internally no particularly by women leaders in IUF and so let's let's go to so

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Dexo and actually do that so that's an interesting. Okay. Bridget, you have a question.

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Yeah, it's just a little bit of a slightly We'll follow up on that. I'm curious because Michelle your portrait was very much that this is a sort of top-down moment, and movement that's happening with these.

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I'm curious, I mean in Uni Globe, I mean this is my only tiny little bit of knowledge about this.

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Unique Global has a Women, what do they call it? A woman. Oh, I think it's called Woman World President, right?

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Which is an elected position that comes from affiliates. And in that position, it's Patricia Niemann, who has for decades who comes from the South African Union Sacao who has for decades been fighting about sexual harassment and has extended this into Uni Global.

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So I'm wondering, are there examples that it gets pushed up from the bottom?

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Another good point and part of the story I left out because of time constraints. So the women's committees have been really important and particular cases in particular countries have really sparked engagement.

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So when I was talking about the AUF, I mean if you looked within that you're looking at the individual well too long years an individual Barbara as an individual and those of you who have worked on domestic workers would know her role in the formation of the IDWF and the pushing for the domestic workers would know her role in the formation of the IDWF and the pushing for the

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domestic workers would know her role in the pushing for the domestic workers convention and so on, the domestic workers convention and so on, but also the elected women on those committees.

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So that's very much for me, but also the elected women on those committees. So that's very much for me.

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People in the regions, people from affiliates, but from what I've heard so far really women have got on board with this and then gone home and pushed it through their union and used it as a leverage point and pulling back to the funding part.

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And I mean those of you who know me know that I've done a lot of work on trade union aid and how that influences unions.

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And this is another example where actually the norms entrepreneurship through the guffs, which is not always great, but in this case I think it really is a very positive force for change.

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Okay, before we go on, I want to see if there's anybody that wants to have a question of Demetrius so we can pull him back into the conversation.

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That's fine. Thanks, Kim.

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I have it him. Demetrius I'll say I want to talk to you because This alliance with some of the stuff we've done later on.

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I'll be talking to you personally. All right, let's go on. I saw some hands.

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A gentlemen of that.

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Thanks. So Robin Hatcher from the London School of Economics. I was just trying to think what was common.

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I was just trying to think what was common to these presentations and it struck me that what was common to these presentations and it struck me that what was common was the belief that there was an underlying mechanism and it struck me that what was common was the belief that there was an underlying mechanism where unions who were trying to do this were empowered

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and the belief that there was an underlying mechanism where unions who were trying to do this were empowered and the mechanism was that the brands were fearful Tell me if this is wrong, but I had that was my understanding of it.

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They were essentially fearful of a sort that was my understanding of it. They were essentially fearful of a sort of partial consumer boycott.

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And one of you said I can't one of the ends I think said something to the effect of well they don't know if it's a parent or real this this fear.

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It was you, I'm sorry. Sorry. You could be an M as well. Have any of you looked into whether it whether it is real?

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And more important in a way, I mean what would happen if it became apparent to these brands that it was more apparent than real.

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And I asked this and I just briefly say because there's a background of course of consumer boycott mechanisms going back into the nineteenth century union label in the United States and so on.

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None of which sort of look like they had much influence over a long period of time. So that's my question.

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And

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You start making a walk back with the mic. I think this I'll talk about an empirical comparison which I think answers the question I hope answers the question and that's between the role of the brands as indirect mediation in Cambodia versus in Indonesia.

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So when Mike and I were in Cambodia in 2,017 we spoke with the good officers of the solidarity centre is the AFL CIO.

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Spoke to a number of brands in Cambodia and both the unions and the brand representatives were quite open about how quickly, how open the brands were to intervene directly.

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The brand representatives were to intervene directly in Cambodia. And Cambodia is a small market.

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The garment industry is huge, even though a lot of that garment industry does not produce for high-profile brands.

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The country's brand, in effect, relates a lot to how the government industry is perceived. And the state mechanisms don't work.

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So at that stage we were thinking very much and we still think that in lots of ways that brand mechanism was a pseudo regulatory system because of the failure of the regulatory system.

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What's happened since that time is the government started to try to claw it back from the ILO and from better work and so on.

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That's another story. In Indonesia in that just after that trip I went straight to Indonesia and I spoke to the representatives of the same brands in Indonesia and I'm going, hell no, we don't let unions ring us up.

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And the context is different, right? Indonesia has a large garment industry. It's not as prominent or as internationally visible as Cambodia, but it's still a really significant producing for all the same brands and yet it worked differently.

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So I'm telling this example because I really think as Mike and I have argued many times and we'll continue to argue.

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National context actually really matters with these things, not just in terms of what gets done around unions, but what leverage the brands either can have, do have or choose to have.

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So I think it's a great great question but the answer is actually very complicated.

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Jay. How much we know about this is highly questionable in terms of the reality, that's what I said about the appearance versus reality we don't actually know about it.

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What has been done about it has been quite sceptical about the effect that consumers are actually going to do it.

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But What is, I think what happens is brands are actually afraid that consumers might. Or that it might have an effect.

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Some examples I can think of in relation to the accord. So for example, Initially, Walmart initially were stonewalling effectively after Rana Plaza and then after the accord was set up there was a campaign a public petition campaign here Walmart to sign up to the accord they said no but we're gonna set

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up an alternative the Alliance that was like nearly the same type or trying to portray as being a similar type initiative.

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What interestingly then happened was that Fruit and Loom signed up to the Alliance, which is made up of 28 North American and one Australian company.

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Fruit of Loom signed up to the Alliance and a campaign started by United students against sweatshops across universities because food will in very powerful in the College Apollo sector to get through the loom to sign up to the accord and through the loom had a fear of the campus.

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Pushed back and signed up to the accord as a response and actually ended up being in both. So I think the reality of whether or not people are going to boycott is very questionable but what it does do is it is a fear that brands have that consumers might.

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Have a reaction against them and they respond to it. So that's how I would see it. Just quickly down on a couple of points on because great question I think as well.

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I mean, like all these brands and corporations have these sustainable sustainability reports, right? Where they report about compliance with corporations have these sustainable sustainability reports, where they report about compliance with labor rights, where they report about compliance with labor rights and environmental impacts.

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These things are not written for consumers. They are written for institutional investors, particularly ethical investment funds.

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So that's the other part of the equation. They're all looking at how their reputation is perceived in terms of this.

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Compliance with human rights and due diligence and so forth. So we can all say, okay, this is not a serious thing but for them this is something there's this track into their Question of accessing capital as well as the reputational impacts But I think the problem with the brand based leverage, I mean there's lots of problems

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with it but and this I think the comments we've had already is you know the larger you are and the more visible you are the more you will care about the institutional investors and consumer you know, reputation and so the more leverage there is but of course there are many low-profile brands and retailers that contract from these

427
01:21:42.000 --> 01:22:03.000
countries. So when Michelle and I were in Cambodia we interviewed the Ken Loo who's the head of GMAC the employer association very colorful character and he said yeah I mean this is specifically about act and the living wage initiative he said it's probably a good idea It would be good for all the brands who are

428
01:22:03.000 --> 01:22:13.000
working with suppliers where they care about these compliance issues. But the thing is you have to understand is that we have 5 star hotels, 4 star hotels, but we also have some 3 and 2 star hotels.

429
01:22:13.000 --> 01:22:17.000
You know, and that's, that's the problem.

430
01:22:17.000 --> 01:22:23.000
Very interesting. Someone else? Other question? OK, Benjamin.

431
01:22:23.000 --> 01:22:27.000
Yeah, Ben, I mean, Velasco from, the University of the Philippines.

432
01:22:27.000 --> 01:22:37.000
My question is to Jimmy and Michael your presentation highlighted the limits of the Bangladesh Accord and also ARK.

433
01:22:37.000 --> 01:22:49.000
But there's also literature that seeks to understand these 2 as forms of worker-driven social responsibility WSR.

434
01:22:49.000 --> 01:22:57.000
Similar to your presentation, builds upon like the depth, the deficit sob CSR, right?

435
01:22:57.000 --> 01:23:06.000
But understands the Bangladesh Award or ACT or app. Us as leveraging worker power.

436
01:23:06.000 --> 01:23:16.000
At different levels or scales. To, remediate these deficits in CSR.

437
01:23:16.000 --> 01:23:32.000
So, I mean, what are your thoughts that, I mean, WSR or WSR or WORLD DERIVANIBILITY, yeah, specific, specific Ellie sites, Bangladesh Award, Act, a slight models of moving forward to regulate.

438
01:23:32.000 --> 01:23:45.000
Like, our team or regulating industrial relations.

439
01:23:45.000 --> 01:23:52.000
I think first I think it's fair to say I don't think I would be regarded as a critic of the accord in many ways.

440
01:23:52.000 --> 01:24:19.000
I think people have actually said the opposite probably 2 positivists too positive an interpretation and in fact myself and my co author we actually wrote a piece in the journal of supply chain management a couple of years ago where we talked about worker-driven labor standards being developed in response to as a model going forward for it.

441
01:24:19.000 --> 01:24:31.000
For us, our perspective is very much that We might and I think this has been a problem. This was a problem when we started looking at this issue.

442
01:24:31.000 --> 01:24:39.000
The whole project emerged because we realized that Yudiano was teaching CSR and I was teaching international labor issues.

443
01:24:39.000 --> 01:24:47.000
We were both teaching about what we saw as international labor standards, international labour governance. I was doing about Ifa's GFA.

444
01:24:47.000 --> 01:25:00.000
She was doing about CSRs and nobody was interacting about them. So the project arose by basically going from the CSR literature to the IR and bringing together the IRLager.

445
01:25:00.000 --> 01:25:08.000
To me the point here is though that the reality of the world we're in is that no matter what we say about how good it would be to have union organizing around the world and perfect models.

446
01:25:08.000 --> 01:25:38.000
The corporations all have CSR. The corporations don't all have unions. So for us, our argument is about Can we show a way in which worker participation makes it better, has results for workers, isn't so much about green washing or the like but instead putting forward a positive case for work for worker participation.

447
01:25:40.000 --> 01:25:51.000
I think if we We saw I'm agreeing with you, but my argument is very much that we need to have worker participation.

448
01:25:51.000 --> 01:26:04.000
Under whatever label it happens, whether it is CSR or worker-driven social responsibility, that is positive as a means of recognising that workers have interest separate from management that need to be delivered.

449
01:26:04.000 --> 01:26:09.000
So I'm with you on that.

450
01:26:09.000 --> 01:26:29.000
Yeah, we do joint work so I might put a little bit on this too, but I mean I don't think anyone in this room would be an opponent of worker-driven regulation right the point is is it aspiration or is it reality and I mean I think echoing Jimmy's comments, having a seat at the table

451
01:26:29.000 --> 01:26:35.000
and being recognized as a relevant stakeholder to use the CSR language is much better than not.

452
01:26:35.000 --> 01:26:40.000
Right? The Weather Act and the Bangladesh Accord are worker-driven.

453
01:26:40.000 --> 01:26:49.000
In practice, we have to ask a question and in the case of act at least in the countries we're looked at, it's very much still aspiration rather than reality.

454
01:26:49.000 --> 01:27:05.000
So we're very interested in that. I don't all of this discourse versus practice and how far discourse and important discourse and discourse encourages people and mobilizes people but when does the rubber hit the road and I guess that's where we're coming from rather than critiquing the

455
01:27:05.000 --> 01:27:09.000
aspiration.

456
01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:20.000
I want to, I can speak from the podium here. A question that I have on this is are these different agreements and accords and things like this?

457
01:27:20.000 --> 01:27:29.000
Are they basically an effort of some of the Gulfs and other organizations to, to, Try to find a shortcut.

458
01:27:29.000 --> 01:27:45.000
To getting workers support and stuff like that. Or are they actually trying to organize on the ground? Because one of the things that we see and this is one of the I like your comparative approach across these countries and I think this panel's been really good.

459
01:27:45.000 --> 01:27:53.000
But the question I would have is why aren't we at least using the Philippines as one of the examples because we've got a lot of research from the Philippines.

460
01:27:53.000 --> 01:28:00.000
It's different than what's happening in Cambodia or Indonesia or Myanmar, etc.

461
01:28:00.000 --> 01:28:07.000
Why aren't we taking, why aren't we looking at as well? And so and I bring that up because in the Philippines one of the things that's been done at least by the KMU.

462
01:28:07.000 --> 01:28:21.000
I think 4 or 5 different union centers. But one of the things done by the KMU is that they really have gone to the workers and organized there and it's you know, from the bottom up.

463
01:28:21.000 --> 01:28:32.000
So they talks about your type of unionism, what what's our conception of unionism? Will it work or is it just basically people trying to speak for the workers without the workers having any involvement or power?

464
01:28:32.000 --> 01:28:38.000
So that's just a question I'd like to throughout there. Anybody wants to talk to that?

465
01:28:38.000 --> 01:28:48.000
That's Yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Yeah, this is a quick one for Michelle. But I really liked all the papers today. But I really liked all the papers today.

466
01:28:48.000 --> 01:28:56.000
I think they were great. You're dealing with a very difficult topic for unions. Anybody who's worked in unions, been a steward, elected position.

467
01:28:56.000 --> 01:29:02.000
Worst nightmare you have is a sexual harassment case in your workplace, especially if it's a worker on worker.

468
01:29:02.000 --> 01:29:10.000
Because you have to defend the worker who's done the harassing and the person who's been harassed has no supports.

469
01:29:10.000 --> 01:29:30.000
Structurally at all in many cases from the union unless they have built them in other ways. So I'm just wondering with the GUF, is this a way for the employer to discipline unions who sometimes are a barrier in dealing with harassment because they're forced in an adversarial, adversarial relationship to defend harassers.

470
01:29:30.000 --> 01:29:35.000
In a discipline case, for example, a ratser gets fired. Of course, they have to.

471
01:29:35.000 --> 01:29:46.000
Or even to defend and do process. So that's just really something that struck me because I think it's really important work and I'm hoping that Geoffs can do something about that.

472
01:29:46.000 --> 01:29:58.000
Thank you and as you were giving that talk, pondering on that one of the cases from vitamin, one of the cases from vitres and my work in Cambodia really came to mind we're doing a project on gender-based violence in Cambodia really came to mind we're doing a project

473
01:29:58.000 --> 01:30:10.000
on it really came to mind we're doing a project on gender-based violence in the construction sector and One that we're interviewing one of the presidents of one of the unions who had raised a case with us where a member of her union had been harassed by a member of another union in the same factory and the other union

474
01:30:10.000 --> 01:30:19.000
wouldn't act. I think the structural thing, should we be defending sexual harassers? Unions can actually have policies on these things.

475
01:30:19.000 --> 01:30:22.000
There can be things that should be defending sexual harassers. Unions can actually have policies on these things.

476
01:30:22.000 --> 01:30:30.000
There can be things that unions choose not to defend their members about and if they have really strong norms internally and they've done the work internally because of course the other thing is what about sexual harassment within unions?

477
01:30:30.000 --> 01:30:46.000
And there are so what our project officer who would Lee was at a training done by an NGO for unions the other day where the The trainer was using inappropriate metaphors about multiple wives and all sorts of things in the training.

478
01:30:46.000 --> 01:31:05.000
So I mean I think one of our points here is actually that at least from the IUS perspective and the perspective of the affiliates as far as tentatively need to be confirmed is that where you can actually change unionists ideas about this.

479
01:31:05.000 --> 01:31:10.000
If you if media members don't feel like they can harass people as often, that's an automatic reduction and then unions can make policy decisions where there is a no tolerance policy on these things.

480
01:31:10.000 --> 01:31:21.000
I think that could be overcome. I agree it's a difficult issue but maybe that is the point.

481
01:31:21.000 --> 01:31:43.000
Yeah. Yeah, just adding on to that quicker. Yeah, I think that's. Really interesting point because like for instance the uni lever agreement that they have with the IUF Yeah, it's not very long, but it does have a kind of established protocols for dealing with the complainant right and principles around

482
01:31:43.000 --> 01:31:53.000
preserving anonymity and also that the perpetrator will be redeployed and these sorts of things that in a sense would take some of those things.

483
01:31:53.000 --> 01:32:00.000
It's already jointly negotiated between management and the union about how they would resolve those matters. So there's a kind of collaborationist.

484
01:32:00.000 --> 01:32:04.000
Logic there and there's definitely an agenda for This is what I think we're veering towards.

485
01:32:04.000 --> 01:32:15.000
This is a very interesting agenda for This agreement being targeted towards changing unions as much as it is about changing companies.

486
01:32:15.000 --> 01:32:24.000
Jimmy, do you want it? Yeah, a bug. Kim's point about are we seeing union organizing on the ground?

487
01:32:24.000 --> 01:32:28.000
I think it's been very limited in Bangladesh, but there has been an increase in unionization.

488
01:32:28.000 --> 01:32:40.000
I think though the context of the core is important because it essentially is an agreement to stop. Workers. Dying on a day to day basis.

489
01:32:40.000 --> 01:32:50.000
It wasn't essentially an agreement like a GFA in order to gain widespread spread process right across the board.

490
01:32:50.000 --> 01:32:59.000
But what did happen in 2,018 when the transitioner corridor which effectively was the extension of the core by 3 years.

491
01:32:59.000 --> 01:33:02.000
The transitional corridor, which effectively was the extension of the corps by 3 years, saw a change in a clause by 3 years.

492
01:33:02.000 --> 01:33:07.000
It saw a change in a clause by 3 years. It saw a change in a clause over freedom of association right in terms of health and freedom association rights in terms of health and safety issues.

493
01:33:07.000 --> 01:33:20.000
And there was huge pushback from the BGMA which was the Bangladeshi, government manufacturers, exports association against the clause around Freedom Association, the right for workers to organise even over such a very narrow area.

494
01:33:20.000 --> 01:33:46.000
And that brings That's actually part of where we're saying about this idea of market driven enforcement of democracy and the like is that the government very much to the forefront in terms of stopping things like union registrations, denial and the like.

495
01:33:46.000 --> 01:33:59.000
Through not necessarily aggression by the government except well there is industrial police but through very time unions up and bureaucratic knots.

496
01:33:59.000 --> 01:34:13.000
There hasn't, I wouldn't say that there has been an upsurge in organizing, but the purpose of the agreement was very immediate to try to stop people dying and on that front I think it

497
01:34:13.000 --> 01:34:33.000
Sorry for forgetting your question before, Kim. I think 2 things on this. One is that I think in the way the Guffs did hope that these would become a shortcut in some ways that in union low density union areas they could open up space for freedom of association they could they could actually get some of the things that you

498
01:34:33.000 --> 01:34:48.000
unions might bargain for in a place like the United States through higher-level structures. But at the same time, the absolute wolter-wall feedback we've had from every single guff we've talked to about GFAs is that they only work.

499
01:34:48.000 --> 01:34:52.000
When there's an you know when there's a strong local union and when that union is on board and they're not the same things, and I think these sexual harassment agreements will really show that even more clearly.

500
01:34:52.000 --> 01:35:07.000
But even on more general issues, there is a lot of agenda items that come through the GFs, whether it be the GFAs or whatever, that theates aren't interested in.

501
01:35:07.000 --> 01:35:15.000
But unless there are, then basically they're just pieces of paper and there's really no momentum for them to be realized.

502
01:35:15.000 --> 01:35:19.000
Okay, someone else.

503
01:35:19.000 --> 01:35:33.000
Okay, back in the back. Yeah. We will stop a little bit at least we can have it right before we Thank you.

504
01:35:33.000 --> 01:35:41.000
I'm Tom Barr at the University of Western Australia. Just interested given the context of textile industry where jobs are mobile and plant can move quite easily.

505
01:35:41.000 --> 01:35:58.000
Whether there's any coordinating role based on price between the different countries when we're talking about the act and the different agreements because obviously if these things aren't coordinated there's the potential for jobs to be offshore, particularly into two-star hotels and whether that's a consideration when we're talking about these things

506
01:35:58.000 --> 01:36:07.000
with local level unions and sort of the tension between raising job standards and the potential for capital flight.

507
01:36:07.000 --> 01:36:24.000
Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I guess that we were talking about our Asia Floor Wage Alliance earlier, the idea is you have a regional floor to stop competition between different production sites.

508
01:36:24.000 --> 01:36:35.000
But to be honest, even where you've had increases in minimum wages in countries basically through worker mobilization including in Bangladesh through street-based protests in Cambodia.

509
01:36:35.000 --> 01:36:43.000
It's all cheap labor to these brands. And it's not such a big factor for them as you would think.

510
01:36:43.000 --> 01:36:51.000
I mean because it's it's all cheap labour. But sorry, what is important is that they diversify their sourcing.

511
01:36:51.000 --> 01:36:58.000
So they don't want to just rely on Bangladesh, and Myanmar, we had a military coup.

512
01:36:58.000 --> 01:37:03.000
Most of the brands are still there. Cost of labour has collapsed because the economy has collapsed.

513
01:37:03.000 --> 01:37:19.000
They're there for the benefit of the workers so they don't lose their jobs but But the point is they want to have a diversified portfolio of sourcing, so they're looking around the world for the next site and this question about how you know, can they quickly move out move in?

514
01:37:19.000 --> 01:37:27.000
It's not as seamless as you might think, but yes, there is a mobility there, but I think that's just one of many factors.

515
01:37:27.000 --> 01:37:32.000
The other thing is, even in labor intensive industries, the cost of labour is relatively small compared to other costs, including the cost of doing business.

516
01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:41.000
Is the electricity system stable? Do you have a government that's not. In turmoil.

517
01:37:41.000 --> 01:37:53.000
How many bribes do you have to pay? So all those sorts of things. There's a lot of, of course, companies talk about it because that's where they can squeeze costs, but in fact the cost of doing business in most of these countries are not about the cost of labor.

518
01:37:53.000 --> 01:38:07.000
And the proof of that putting is wages in China are a lot higher than a lot of countries in the region and yet China is a preferred site because authoritarian regimes are just easier to deal with.

519
01:38:07.000 --> 01:38:15.000
I don't think I've anything particularly much to add, so I'll leave it.

520
01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:26.000
That doesn't happen against somebody else. I want to, Jimmy alluded to, I think it was Jimmy, alluded to something that I might as well ask since I've got a moment.

521
01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:35.000
And that is there's nothing in here about the Solidarity Center. And the solidarity center is in Bangladesh and they are in Cambodia.

522
01:38:35.000 --> 01:38:42.000
We know that quite strongly. I don't know about Miramar. I doubt it. Oh, are they?

523
01:38:42.000 --> 01:38:59.000
Okay. What's what's been their role from what you can see? We've, I personally have published an article by, by, I forget his first name but Ryan who was the director of the Southeast of East Asia.

524
01:38:59.000 --> 01:39:13.000
Tim Ryan, thank you, about their work in Bangladesh, but I also published in an issue of labor and society, one by other people who were challenging their work in Bangladesh.

525
01:39:13.000 --> 01:39:25.000
So I was wondering what. Your thinking was as far as what are they doing? Is it helping? Is it hurting workers?

526
01:39:25.000 --> 01:39:34.000
I really don't know. I mean there there's some cases where they seem to be helping some cases they don't and so I think I'll take the advantage there.

527
01:39:34.000 --> 01:39:40.000
Okay I'm thinking Cambodia and Myanmar they played a very constructive and useful role in supporting.

528
01:39:40.000 --> 01:39:55.000
Unions and with good knowledge of what's happening on the ground. So I think the short answer is the next play to really strong and good role in places like Myanmar there is no sort of Cold War hangover in terms of the solidarity center so but they were very low-key in Myanmar.

529
01:39:55.000 --> 01:40:03.000
In Cambodia they have much more bigger and stronger operation that I think a good roleash or Jimmy can comment on Bangladesh.

530
01:40:03.000 --> 01:40:19.000
Do you want it? Yeah, if you look back at a place like Indonesia in the authoritarian period in Indonesia there were 2 international organizations that were most influential and that was the Frederick Ibbot stifle and the Achilles or whatever it was called back then.

531
01:40:19.000 --> 01:40:34.000
And Fest was interesting because actually the whole structure of theitarian labor regime in Indonesia, the whole structure of the authoritarian labor regime in Indonesia for 32 years was modelled on the German system. Right?

532
01:40:34.000 --> 01:40:50.000
So actually the Fiji Ebot Stiftong rather than the Solidarity Centre was responsible for much of the problems in Indonesia in that But if you look in the in the eightys after Indonesia moved to export, in the eightys after Indonesia moved to export industrialization and particularly in garments and

533
01:40:50.000 --> 01:41:05.000
textiles. The Solidarity Center played a pretty strong role in underground organizing. It supported and the difference between both of those and say the guffs or indeed the other SSOs is that they had offices in all these countries and if you've got an office you get to know the people you're not going in

534
01:41:05.000 --> 01:41:17.000
bringing in your you've got preconceptions but they're tempered by reality in a way that is much harder if you're flying in for a week from Europe or you're managing 70 countries.

535
01:41:17.000 --> 01:41:27.000
So I think in Indonesia, 70 countries. So I think in Indonesia too, I think in Indonesia too I got Rudy Porter once yelled at me for 45 min and I got Rudy Porter once yelled at me for 45 min and he said I was I was a a traitor to the workers

536
01:41:27.000 --> 01:41:37.000
movement yelled at me for 45 min and he said I was a traitor to the workers movement because I'd criticized what was in the American Centre for International Solidarity, to the workers movement because I'd criticized what was in the America's movement because I'd criticized what was in the workers movement because I'd criticized what

537
01:41:37.000 --> 01:41:42.000
was the workers movement because I'd criticized, what was in the American Centre for International Solidarity, Labor Solidar Very generous of you after being called a traitor.

538
01:41:42.000 --> 01:41:54.000
In general, pretty similar. I actually have made a note here with a question made again about the FGA.

539
01:41:54.000 --> 01:41:56.000
I've made a note here with a question made a note here with a question made again about the FBI.

540
01:41:56.000 --> 01:42:09.000
I actually have got I've made a note here with question met again about the FGA, the question met again about the FGA, again about the FGA, but again about the FGA, Burt Stifton, and also groups like TF from Denmark are heavily involved in type solidarity work in addition.

541
01:42:09.000 --> 01:42:16.000
However, even with some competition between unions on the ground level, there are heavily involved in type solidarity work in addition.

542
01:42:16.000 --> 01:42:21.000
However, even with in type solidarity work in addition. However, even with some of the competition between unions on the ground, in addition.

543
01:42:21.000 --> 01:42:29.000
However, even with some of the competition between unions on the ground level, there's also competition between unions on the ground level.

544
01:42:29.000 --> 01:42:44.000
There's also competition between these sort One of the point, one of the interesting things that I found about their approach to the unions in Bangladesh was they very much had an open door.

545
01:42:44.000 --> 01:42:59.000
If you are a registered union with rights with a Brexit union, they end the door open to help them to aid them and the like rather than industrial having to be affiliated and the like.

546
01:42:59.000 --> 01:43:23.000
But in particular they were doing things like focusing on getting in union Jews, setting up a system for collecting Jews, setting up systems for banking rather than having it cash in the back pocket of the president or general secretary but having bank account and these sort of what we regard as the bureaucracy of unions was very much being driven through the

547
01:43:23.000 --> 01:43:35.000
solidarity center like Alonzo Suzanne was doing huge work in DACA trying to get the sort of administrative procedures in place to enable the union.

548
01:43:35.000 --> 01:43:58.000
So I think there's a lot of criticism of the FL CIO that but they were very helpful and also in linking things like the WRC to unions and actually the WRC were the ones who are getting very heavily involved on the ground with helping, whereas the AFL, CIO,

549
01:43:58.000 --> 01:44:14.000
Solar-stander was very much focusing more the administrative side whereas the European groups were very much going down the old route of international donations rather than focusing on how to get together union organization.

550
01:44:14.000 --> 01:44:29.000
Great. We're almost at time. Demetrius was going to ask if you had any last-minute thoughts or comments on some of the conversations, going to ask if you had any last minute thoughts or comments on some of the conversations or you have any last minute thoughts or comments on on some of the conversations or you want to say anything that sort of closes

551
01:44:29.000 --> 01:44:30.000
out.

552
01:44:30.000 --> 01:44:34.000
No, I'm fine with that. It was very productive discussion. I was following.

553
01:44:34.000 --> 01:44:45.000
Okay, well I think so. Well folks it's about time so let's give our One for a lot of him.

554
01:44:45.000 --> 01:44:50.000
And we've got about 15 min till the business meeting. Michelle, if you want to say anything about that.

555
01:44:50.000 --> 01:45:09.000
And remember the business leading will be short and sharp so please do come half an hour and then we're going to have the author meets critic session after that and then for those of you joining us for dinner you're welcome and if anyone would like to join us for dinner and didn't register we've had a couple of people to join us for dinner and didn't register we've had a couple of people indicate they can't come so we've

556
01:45:09.000 --> 01:45:12.000
probably got a couple of spaces. Anyway enjoy your little break.