Has The Modern Day Slavery Global Movement Mitigated Slavery In Supply Chains?

Though the global movement to end modern day slavery in supply chains has had increased media attention and has been joined by numerous channels, modern day slavery is still an issue in supply chains of the world's largest companies. Global enterprises, sourcing their products from all over the world have directly or indirectly affected human trafficking in supply chains. The increase in demand for high-quality products throughout the world has put pressure on companies to source their products from areas with minimal labor oversight. Unfortunately, developing countries typically do not have the ability to allocate resources to properly monitor labor oversight. Many factories and suppliers lower tiers of the supply chain can let their labor standards fall below the global standard without repercussion because of the inability to properly monitor and evaluate them.  

There are an estimated 21 million people involved in modern day slavery. Certain aspects of today's globalized business trends have awakened and strengthened certain types of forced labor. Globalized supply chains bring an increased demand for labor that, in some cases don't have the supply of laborers needed to meet the demand. This scenario is the primary way companies encourage workers to migrate to their location for work. Worker migration has been a hot topic in forced labor over the past few years, and companies are now starting to see the warning signs of unfair labor practices through worker trafficking. To learn more about the problems associated with worker migration, click here.

Companies, NGO's, and Special Interest Groups have all been looking at ways to mitigate the risk of forced labor going undetected in supply chains. New forms of supply chain tracing and assessing have been developed - KnowTheChain, a program of Humanity United has taken an approach that attempts to assess modern day slavery in supply chains, based on industry insights and data. In May 2016, KnowTheChain released their first Industry Specific Benchmark Report. For their first analysis, KnowTheChain measured the risk of forced labor in the supply chains of companies from the information and technology communication sector. To perform a non-biased analysis, KnowTheChain gathered company level information from two main areas; Anti-Slavery statements on websites and publicly disclosed information through press releases and other outlets. KnowTheChain then applied their methodology to their findings and scored companies on their efforts to mitigate slavery in their supply chains. Kilian Moote, Program Director of KnowTheChain recently broke down their new industry-specific approach on Source Intelligence's webinar, Modern Day Slavery: The Harsh Repercussions of Globalized Supply Chains. You can view the entire webinar here.

Two modern day slavery laws that affect a large body of global companies are the UK Modern Day Slavery Act, and the California Transparency In Supply Chains Act (SB-657). These laws are in place to not only to ensure companies are putting forth efforts to mitigate the risk of slavery in their supply chains, but also give conscious consumers the opportunity to make purchasing decisions based on companies commitments to sustainability and ethical sourcing. There are many technical aspects of the UK Modern Day Slavery Act and SB-657, that make compliance difficult. Source Intelligence has come up with regulation guides to help companies learn more about robust reporting and the competitive advantages of a strong anti-slavery report. You can access the UK Modern Day Slavery Act Regulation Guide, here, and The California Transparency In Supply Chains Act (SB-657), here.