We’re just here to support them as global labor justice in International Labor Rights Forum, so that’s us. I will pass it now to Nofian Kubalang, who are leading us really in this campaign. Thank you.

This is why we’re here. I’m not going to talk anymore. I’m going to actually let the protagonists of this struggle really be the ones because that’s our job is to make sure that these organizations are at the forefront of this.

We just think Taiwan is to push further. That’s it. You know what I mean? How do we make sure that workers know their rights, but the power to exercise it?

This is a huge industry. We’re talking about 20,000 workers and a thousand vessels. Taiwan really being one of the top industries in the world. The fact that you might do the right thing, this actually sets the tone for a regional standard that we will like to very much ...

Right, and just because we have the right sometimes, it doesn’t mean that we have the technical infrastructure to practice it, and this is how then the digital rights and finding a way to make this affordable is what we’re looking for here.

Yes. In some ways, you’re really so pro-democratic. Taiwan, in this region, it is really exceptional that workers have the right to form unions and organize with us and the rest of the Asian world, I’d say. That’s not optimal practice. We already think that Taiwan is doing the right ...

Transparency.

One of the things that we were really excited about is that you talk about radical…

Like I said, we don’t lead campaigns. We collaborate and partner very equally with the organizations of workers. It’s their priorities that we then help amplify to address issues of exploitation, dispossession, and unethical working conditions.

We also coordinate the seafood work in group. It’s a global coalition of human rights, labor rights, and environmental rights, working at addressing labor abuses, and actually also sustainability issues in the industry itself. We focus in Thailand, Taiwan, and other countries in East and Southeast Asia. Hopefully, we’ll be ...

We also want to normalize the fact that workers have the right to organize, have the right to have a voice, and that’s not necessarily happening in this industry yet, but we will make it there.

We want to collaborate with industry. We want to invite them to sit down and figure out how do we get this done in a way that is phase by phase, but it’s surely going to help workers and all of us consumers make sure that this is happening with ...

That’s an important part, especially of businesses that are ethical, but maybe small or middle enterprises. We want to make sure that they have the resources and can work with us as an industry.

You will hear there are vessel owners that are already providing digital communications for their workers and are doing the right thing, but there are other ones that might be actually not in support of that. That creates costs on the ones that are doing the right thing. We are ...

One of the things that is important is that we believe that exploitation of workers really makes unfair competition for those companies that are taking advantage.

One of the things is that we’re working with a lot of allies in this campaign and in general. The idea here really is to bring international standards to companies and to push the multinationals at the European and US level because that’s the end users. At the end, we ...

We work mainly in industries like cotton, agriculture, and fishing. This is around the world. Our organization is everywhere.

We work globally at the intersection of migrant rights, gender rights, and really vulnerable workers at the bottom of value chains. We, in particular, try to be quite intersectional. Most of our work really either involves, like I said, gender or caste or, in the case of migrant workers, migrant ...

That’s right. As you will hear, it’s not so easy. It’s not so easy because of isolation and also because there is retaliation when forming and exercising rights at the work level.

Also the right to freedom of association, which is the right to form unions without retaliation, surveillance, and also for the right to collectively bargain and have a voice in the industry and society, really.

Our work mainly is to hold global corporations accountable, along value chains, [laughs] for labor rights violations in the supply chains, but also to advance policies and law to protect migrant workers’ decent work right.

As a deputy, I just want to explain a little bit who we are, Global Labor Justice – International Labor Rights Forum. We work out of DC. We’re a global labor rights organization.

First of all, thank you, Minister Tang, Audrey, and colleagues, for hosting us today at your office. We believe the right to safe digital communication to be crucial for our campaign. We think that this ministry is quite important because of it.

Valery Alzaga. I am the deputy director of Global Labor Justice, International Labor Rights Forum.