Building Dignity and Respect
Standards Council (BDC)
We envision a future where every worker is treated with dignity and respect.
The mission of the Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council (BDC) is to set the standards for and monitor the development of a Twin Cities construction industry that advances the human rights of workers and the long-term interests of developers and contractors through implementation of the Building Dignity and Respect Program (BDR).
There is a crisis in the Twin Cities residential construction industry.
Most commercial construction projects and many multi-family residential construction projects are done with union labor insuring that workers are treated with dignity and respect. But in industry sectors where unionization is not prevalent, such as single-family residential and multi-family residential in the suburbs, workers face rampant violations of their human rights.
Read more about this crisis in the December 2019 report released by the WSR-Network, “Building Dignity and Respect: The Case for Worker-driven Social Responsibility in the Twin Cities Construction Industry”:
The Building Dignity and Respect Program is based on the industry-transforming work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, and their emerging model of Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR.) WSR is founded on the understanding that, in order to achieve meaningful and lasting improvements, human rights protections in corporate supply and production chains of goods and services must be worker-driven, enforcement-focused, and based on legally binding commitments that assign responsibility for improving working conditions to the companies at the top of those chains.
Under this program, Developers will enter legally binding Program Participation Agreements with BDC that require all contractors at every tier of a project to abide by basic standards that protect the rights of workers to fair treatment, a safe workplace, and a voice in their working conditions. In addition to independent monitoring, workers are empowered as frontline monitors and defenders of their own rights, with strict protections against retaliation. Market consequences for non-compliant contractors ensure swift resolutions with meaningful remedies when violations are uncovered. Eventually, the goal is to prevent abuses from occurring in the first place.
A New Model for Protecting Human Rights at Work
