Director – Labour Rights

Steve Gibbons is Ergon's Labour Rights Director. He has many years experience of working on labour rights issues not only from a legal perspective, but also in policy and strategic advisory roles, particularly analysing how varied organisations can best contribute to compliance with internationally-recognised labour standards. He also often acts as an expert trainer and facilitator.

Steve is a lawyer qualified in the UK. But he has for the last decade specialised in international labour rights and on emerging methods of enforcement.

He has experience of working with a wide range of organisations concerned with the creating a robust and transparent regime of labour standards enforcement and development-focussed actions.

Steve was previously Head of Employment Law at Incomes Data Services where he headed up the law division including responsibility for IDS’s seminar and conference programme, in-company training; and leading IDS activities on both international labour standards and ethical sourcing.

He has written extensively on labour rights issues and has been consultant to the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD); the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the International Finance Corporation (IFC); the UK government Department for International Development (DFID); the International Organisation on Migration (IOM), Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI).

He has worked on projects in Bosnia, Ukraine, Namibia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Brasil, Colombia, Gabon, Russia, Peru, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Jordan and the United Kingdom.

Steve is author of a number of publications on international labour rights, corporate supply chains and labour standards in development. He has also published widely on UK and European labour law. Steve is a regular conference speaker and has devised and implemented numerous training programmes for private sector companies, trades unions and government bodies and international organisations. He has also often acted as a facilitator for multistakeholder groups, public bodies and individual company meetings.