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UNI Global Union Chief, Philip Jennings, and CNTV-CUT President, Jose Boaventura Santos, led a delegation of worker representatives last week to meet with private security procurement decision-makers for the World Cup and Rio 2016. Human rights and labor violations, highlighted in the UNI report, “Violations of human rights in the supply chain: a study of Prosegur in South America” lays out a series of workers’ rights violations in South America, particularly in Colombia and Paraguay. The story plays out time and again--when workers fight to improve their working conditions and pay, union leaders are attacked and workers are threatened with job dismissal if they exercise their legal right to strike for workplace improvements. The company has signed “contracts” with workers and then represented them to be collective agreements when they were not.

The message is clear: Prosegur needs to bring its global human rights and labor practices in line with the ILO and United Nations Conventions, the standards of the Global Compact and FTSE4Good IBEX. They need to “walk the talk.” It’s one things to tout membership in organizations committed to corporate social responsibility. It is quite another things to bring their practices in line with these standards.

The head office claims their labor relations policy is decentralized. Yet managers in the field tell a different story—the head office sets the policy and the various countries just execute that policy. Regardless, Prosegur has the authority to ensure compliance with global human rights standards and it needs to step up and do that.