Based on extensive consultations with monitoring and auditing experts, this Guidance standardizes and explains the Electronics Watch worker-driven monitoring methodology step by step. It includes separate chapters on preparing for monitoring, selecting appropriate methods, and getting and analysing evidence. Annexes, available to monitoring partners only, include sample questionnaires and other research tools.

June 2023: This report has been redacted so that it can be shared publicly without compromising the remediation process or the safety of workers and monitors.

In 2021, Electronics Watch launched a monitoring pilot of mining operations linked to global electronics supply chains. This project is co-funded by Bread for All and includes monitoring in the Philippines, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Bolivia. Electronics Watch has been working with its monitoring partner, Pacific Asia Resource Center (PARC), and their partner, Friends of the Earth Japan (FoE Japan), on nickel mining in the Philippines. PARC is a people's think tank based in Tokyo and works to connect various social movements for common purposes.

"When Compliance is Not Enough - Why victims of forced labour should be partners in the remediation design" shows just why it is essential that workers are involved in the process of remediation, and raises a fundamental question about the limits of responsible business conduct: When companies address violations in their supply chains in accordance with their codes of conduct, but workers still suffer serious harm, does human rights due diligence require the companies to do more?

In 2019, 10,570 migrant factory workers in two facilities of Cal-Comp Thailand, supplier of printers, external hard disk drives and other computer peripherals, received full compensation for excessive recruitment fees they had paid. The settlement followed three years of worker-driven monitoring by Electronics Watch and our monitoring partner, the Migrant Worker Rights Network, and ongoing reporting to, and dialogue with, buyers and Cal-Comp. What happened in this case? What lessons does it offer about remediating debt bondage and forced labour in global supply chains? What remains to be done?

See also: Compliance Report Update: Cal-Comp, Thailand, October 2018; Remedy Proposal for Cal-Comp (Thailand) Workers, February 2019; and Guidance for Remediation and Prevention of Migrant Worker Recruitment Fees and Related Costs in Public Procurement, April 2019.

The Link Between Employment Conditions and Suicide: A Study of the Electronics Sector in China by the Economic Rights Institute and Electronics Watch analyses original quantitative and qualitative data to show how certain employment conditions heighten the risk of employee suicide. The report suggests two "cycles of influence" that contribute to different forms of suicide. In one cycle employers use coercion and punitive forms of discipline to enforce productivity requirements. In the other cycle, employers use hiring requirements and incentives to ensure their flexibility to recruit and downsize, depending on the needs of production. These cycles can result in high levels of stress, depression, or insecurity, aggravated by forced overtime, fines and supervisor hostility in the one cycle, disputes with recruiters and employees struggling with dating and marriage in the other. The Economic Rights Institute and Electronics Watch have issued a "call to action" for a multi-stakeholder taskforce to develop, implement, and monitor an action plan to effectively address employment conditions that heighten the risk of employee suicide in the electronics industry.

See press release, call to action and academic perspectives on the report.