There is growing recognition of the need for a more ‘socially just’ implementation of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) that embraces bottom-up, rights holder-driven approaches.1 An initiative is underway to articulate a set of community principles to supplement the three-pillar ‘respect, protect, remedy’ framework of the UNGPs, with a fourth pillar that underscores the importance of rights holder agency to the effective implementation of human rights protections.2 With regard to access to remedy, the UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has emphasized that ‘rights holders should be central to the entire remedy process’,3 and others have made similar observations, encouraging a ‘co-design’ process.4

Across the United States (US), farmworkers and their allies are mobilizing to encourage companies to join a Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) program. On May Day, hundreds marched in support of Migrant Justice’s campaign to convince the Hannaford supermarket chain to join the Milk With Dignity program, a WSR program focused on working conditions in the dairy industry.1 At the most recent annual shareholder meeting of Wendy’s, a US-based fast food franchise, several members of the board of directors faced opposition to renewal of their positions in response to what some shareholders perceived as Wendy’s inadequate disclosure on its efforts to protect workers in its supply chain.2 The opposition forms part of a years-long campaign by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers and its allies to convince Wendy’s to join the Fair Food Program, the inaugural WSR program.3