Include enforceable labor standards in trade agreements
International trade
Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
Why shareholder democracy is helpful
Trade agreements are negotiated by governments, so the position as written is out of shareholders' hands. The underlying outcome, decent labor conditions in the countries the U.S. trades with, runs through corporate supply chains that owners can reach. ICCR members' engagement led Kraft Heinz to commit to a human rights impact assessment covering forced labor risks in its supply chain, part of a long program pressing companies on supplier labor conditions. The blocker on the position itself is governmental: the most recent U.S. trade agreement, the USMCA, already contains enforceable facility-level labor provisions that have been invoked 23 times since 2020, and writing such terms into new agreements waits on governments choosing to negotiate agreements at all, a choice current tariff-first trade policy has set aside.
How this was scoredHelpful
Helpful. Owners voting their values help. Others must carry most of it.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- Common Ground of the American People: International Trade, Program for Public Consultation / Voice of the People, survey September 2024
- Investors Commend Kraft Heinz for Efforts to Advance Human Rights Due Diligence Throughout its Supply Chain, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, accessed 2026-08-28
- Equitable Global Supply Chains, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, accessed 2026-08-28
- Four Years of the USMCA Rapid-Response Labor Mechanism, Covington & Burling, 2024-05-09
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates member engagements asking apparel, footwear, food and electronics companies to adopt human rights due diligence, supply chain traceability, responsible contracting and grievance mechanisms for supply chain workers.
Equitable Global Supply Chains, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2025
Led the ICCR member proposal asking Kraft Heinz to publish a human rights impact assessment of its supply chain, withdrawn after the company committed to due diligence audits and forced labor detection in high-risk commodities.
Presented a floor proposal at Tesla with Investor Advocates for Social Justice asking for a report on eradicating child labor and forced labor from the supply chain by 2025.
Tesla Inc: Child and Forced Labor in Supply Chains, As You Sow, 2023
4 campaigns on record
Assess the effectiveness of the company's supply chain management in addressing forced labor and wage theft concerns.
Result: Rejected at the September 2024 annual meeting; percentage not stated in source.
Nike shareholders vote against proposal on workers' rights, FashionNetwork, 2024-09
Issue a public report describing if and how Tesla plans to eradicate child labor and forced labor from its supply chain by 2025, including supply chain tracing and transparency.
With Investor Advocates for Social Justice
Result: Presented as a floor proposal and voted at the 2023 annual meeting; vote result not stated in source.
Tesla Inc: Child and Forced Labor in Supply Chains, As You Sow, 2023
Asked Nike to publish a report on worker-driven social responsibility and explain why it has not joined binding worker-safety agreements like the Pakistan Accord (which competitors Adidas and Puma have signed), and raised concerns about forced labor and roughly $2.2 million in allegedly unpaid wages owed to about 4,000 garment workers in Cambodia and Thailand.
With a coalition of over 60 investors
Result: Per Yahoo Finance/Reuters reporting on the following year's repeat vote, the 2023 version of this proposal 'was rejected by nearly 80%' of votes cast; the proposal did not pass. A repeat proposal was voted down again in 2024; we could not confirm the exact 2024 percentage from the sources retrieved.
We found no documented change in Nike's supply-chain labor agreements or practices as a result of this campaign.
Nike shareholders vote against proposal on workers' rights, Reuters (via Yahoo Finance)
Publish a human rights impact assessment to identify and mitigate negative human rights impacts, including forced labor, in the company's supply chain.
With Seventh Generation Interfaith Coalition for Responsible Investment, other ICCR members
Result: Withdrawn after the company made commitments.
Kraft Heinz committed to a human rights impact assessment aligned with the UN Guiding Principles, third-party due diligence audits prioritizing high-risk countries and commodities (tomatoes, cattle, coffee), and measures to detect forced labor beyond social audits.
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How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is Common Ground of the American People's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.