Brynn O’Brien

Brynn is a graduate of UTS with a Bachelor of Medical Science and First Class Honours in Law. She spent several years in legal practice, including as a lawyer at UTS research centre Anti-Slavery Australia where she represented migrant workers who had been trafficked to and seriously exploited in Australia. In 2011, Brynn completed a Master of Laws at Columbia University in New York. She has also worked as a consultant on United Nations, government and non-government projects involving human rights, international law, migration, gender and workplace exploitation issues, and lectured at UTS on Biomedical Law and Bioethics. Hailing from South Coast NSW, Brynn is now based in Germany, where she will undertake the first stage of her research.

Research topic
Brynn’s research topic asks how we can strengthen the position of workers at the bottom of complex transnational supply chains in seeking redress for violations of their human and labour rights. At its most basic, her project seeks to justify and expand upon the principle that where a profit is made in connection with the exploitation and abuse of a worker, the worker should be able to advance a claim for redress against the profit-making entity.

Except for claims relating to supply chains situated wholly within discrete jurisdictional borders and brought under domestic legal systems recognising labour protections, this principle has little practical or legal weight. The global economy is characterised by a proliferation of corporate and contractual structures – and increasingly complex hybrid counterparts – in the absence of a transnational legal system capable of dealing with the claims of workers at the bottom of global value chains (GVCs). Transnationally speaking, individuals are thus relatively poorly placed as rights-holders and remedy-seekers in respect of workplace abuse.

Brynn’s research seeks to address this ‘justice deficit’ through:

• examining how legal responsibility and accountability for the abuse of workers is dissipated through GVCs;
• testing the limits of the current legal remedial regime for workers in GVCs; and
• exploring a remedies-based reform model connecting abused workers – as primary actors – with profit-making entities higher on the GVC.

Real world outcomes
Brynn’s research seeks to contribute to the broad progressive agenda of shrinking the deficit in global workplace justice. Her specific claim is that a ‘worker-facing’ approach seeking pecuniary remedies against corporate violators is necessary to compel human rights-consistent conduct. Her primary projected research outcome is to identify and develop avenues for individuals seeking redress for wrongful conduct in GVCs.