Transport is inherently mobile, international and often delivered through complex subcontracting chains. Compliance with national legislation may be inadequate in ensuring companies and supply chain actors are in compliance with international legal obligations. Therefore, transport requires its own sector-specific mechanisms to ensure that companies and supply chain actors consistently fulfil their human and labour rights obligations.
Unlike many industries, transport work rarely takes place in a single, fixed workplace. Workers operate across borders, move between locations and frequently perform their duties in environments shared with the public or outside direct employer premises. This unique feature of transport necessitates specific standards, applicable to each mode of transport, to ensure the realisation of human and labour rights throughout supply chains.
To address this, companies and supply chain actors must adopt an accurate definition of what constitutes a ‘workplace’ in transport. For transport workers, the workplace includes not only depots, ports, warehouses or terminals, but also the vehicles and operational environments in which work is carried out. Drivers, pilots and seafarers work primarily within moving vehicles or vessels, while cleaners, catering staff and other transport workers may work across multiple vehicles, planes or locations throughout a shift. In all cases, working conditions within vehicles, terminals and transit environments form part of the workplace and must be covered by HRDD.
Companies and supply chain actors must ensure that their HRDD extends to all locations where transport work takes place or where workers are required to be as part of their duties.
Therefore, within HRDD, the ‘workplace’ must be understood to include any environment a transport worker uses, accesses or passes through while working. This includes vehicles used in the course of work, fixed locations and operational facilities, public or shared workspaces, and routes or areas used as a means of access to or exit from that place of work. This also requires ensuring access to safe sanitation and rest facilities for those workplaces, regardless of location.
Cross-border transport workers should be recognised as mobile, migrant workers who often face heightened risks of exploitation, unsafe working conditions, discrimination and barriers to accessing protection or remedy due to differences in jurisdiction, immigration status and employment arrangements. Companies and supply chain actors must therefore actively identify and address these risks to ensure that workers receive the protections and support they require, and benefit from special measures taken by companies to conduct HRDD among migrant workers in their supply chain.