The vital work of putting rules into practice

Established in 2025, the Competence Centre for Human Rights Due Diligence aims to support trade unions, workers, and their representatives worldwide in strengthening workers’ rights. As a member of the advisory board, the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung is closely connected to the Centre. On the occasion of its official launch event in Berlin, we spoke with the Head of the Centre, Kelly Fay Rodríguez.

Since the Competence Centre was established, a year has now passed. What has happened so far, and what have you already achieved?

Kelly Fay Rodríguez: Just weeks ago, we officially launched in Berlin at the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung together with worker leaders, companies, and government officials from around the world.

Before that, a lot has happened. Last year, the Centre completed consultations with global affiliate unions and labor stakeholders about what workers and their unions need right now to ensure their active participation in human rights due diligence. The Centre’s governance structures and priorities were formed, and the Centre’s team was recruited and fully hired just a few months ago. Over the last year, the Centre developed plans for pilot programmes in textile and raw materials sectors, and we just held our first 3-day workshop last week in Lusaka, Zambia with mine worker union leaders from across Southern Africa. Our helpdesk is being developed and has started to receive cases and we are putting procedures in place to support workers and unions with mapping their supply chains and understanding how changes laws offer opportunities for effective company engagement. Our team is now ready and we are working hard to put our mission into action.

And was there already a moment for you, as the head of the Competence Centre, when you realized: this is exactly why we exist?

Yes, there have been several of those moments. Earlier this year, meeting in Cape Town with mine worker union leaders from Southern Africa about human rights due diligence and seeing the energy and enthusiasm for engagement on the ground was one such moment for me. Another was in Berlin at our launch event where we heard from national leaders from around the world – government officials, company representatives, and labor leaders – saying repeatedly that we must work together on due diligence across industries and borders to make sure that our global supply chains are safer, more resilient, and more sustainable. Lastly, every time I read or hear about another case of harassment or any other labor abuse in a workplace I am reminded of why we do this work every day, and why global unions joined forces to create the Centre. We refuse to sit back and just let the status quo persist. We know that better workplaces are possible, which is why we will use every available tool at our disposal to ensure that rights are respected - and this is exactly where and why the Competence Centre supports trade unions in putting these tools into practice, so that they do not remain on paper, but truly have an impact.

The Centre primarily supports trade unions through advice, expertise, and networking. Why do they play such a central role in implementing human rights due diligence?

Labor unions play a unique and crucial role in human rights due diligence because they are the power of workers coming together to improve workplaces, lives, and entire communities. Tarde unions are the trusted and credible actors for workers. They have the important purpose of building a shared agenda that benefits people collectively. An organized and empowered workforce benefits workplaces, businesses, and societies at-large because when workers have the tools to engage collectively with employers, they can help make businesses more successful, communities more sustainable, and supply chains more resilient. They also promote democratic values and practices that are necessary for representative governance and for shared prosperity. 

The best way to defend human rights is to empower the very people who are most directly impacted so that they have the agency and capacity to improve their own conditions collectively. And from a business standpoint: the best way to mitigate risks and remedy harms is to engage constructively with labor unions across a value chain.

Under the banner of competitiveness, EU-level legislation on human rights due diligence has been significantly weakened over the past year. How is the Competence Centre responding to this?

We do not accept the claim that competitiveness and responsible business conduct are in conflict. We are building the evidence base that these laws work for workers and businesses alike. Many companies have already adopted human rights due diligence as a core component of responsible business conduct and they know that mandatory HRDD laws and enforcement are a benefit, not a disadvantage. We can show companies how strengthening freedom of association is the best way to mitigate and remediate risks of forced labor and other labor abuses in global supply chains. Enforceable company agreements with unions can do precisely that.

In response to the recent weakening of EU-level legislation, we focus on ensuring that workers and unions are able to make effective use of the law as it stands. Even in its current narrowed scope, the new CSDDD policy still creates a new and unprecedented opportunity for workers and unions to expand best practices. Workers and unions want to understand how these laws can serve them, and how to be a part of making new rules work for everybody.

The HRDD Competence Centre is engaging with workers and unions all over the world to ensure they have the information and tools to engage. We do this through trainings, resource-building and data collection, and by responding to requests to help identify the best strategies to support workers in conducting human rights due diligence. Lastly, we are coordinating with legal experts to ensure workers have the best tools and resources available so that they can make the most of this moment.

We always say that sound laws on the books are important, but what matters most is whether and how they are put into practice. Every day in workplaces around the world people face harassment and intimidation. They face threats or retaliation for organizing, they are fired, wages are stolen, some suffer violence, or worse. Far too often, workers are subjected to union-busting. These widespread practices mean that workers and unions cannot afford to wait for legislators to get the perfect law on the books, or for anyone else to come save us. We have the power now to put into practice the CSDDD and defend and enforce workers’ rights.

Kelly Fay Rodríguez served as the U.S. Special Representative for International Labor Affairs from 2022 to 2025, where she led global labor policy for President Biden at the at the U.S. Department of State and launched the first-ever Presidential Memorandum to promote workers and labor in U.S. foreign policy and trade. From 2020 to 2022, Kelly served as oversight counsel for the trade committee of the U.S. Congress. Prior to working in government, she led a range of domestic and global trade union programs.