Responsible supply chains

A/Prof Ingrid Landau, 2025

Government procurement and modern slavery

Government procurement can play an important role in the fight to eliminate modern slavery, but little attention has been paid in Australia to how federal and state governments can most effectively use their purchasing power to promote responsible business practices in their supply chains.

Research by Associate Professor Ingrid Landau evaluating the Australian Government’s initial efforts to integrate modern slavery considerations into its procurement framework has informed the work of the NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner, and recommendations of the Independent Report of the Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) Statutory Review: the First Three Years (A Report by Professor John McMillan AO, Commonwealth of Australia, 2023).

Mapping worker grievance ecosystems in Vietnam’s export-oriented garment industry

Effective grievance mechanisms are a key component of responsible business conduct in the global garment industry. For this reason, many garment brands have established their own grievance mechanisms for workers engaged in their supply chains. These mechanisms are intended to complement factory-level and state grievance systems, but they can lead to the existence of multiple mechanisms within the one factory and to overlap, duplication and confusion for workers and businesses alike.

Working with the ILO’s Better Work Vietnam program and three global garment brands, this project takes an innovative ‘ecosystem’ approach that maps and evaluates the multiplicity of grievance mechanisms available to workers in a sample of factories in Vietnam’s export-oriented garment industry.

Combining qualitative interviews with brands, suppliers and other stakeholders with a large-scale survey of workers, this project aims to produce practical insights to improve business practices and access to remedy for workers in global garment supply chains.