Combatting Modern Slavery. Genevieve LeBaron

labour exploitation in supply chains. Today, they are just as likely to be discussed as part of the solution to problems like modern slavery, forced labour and a lack of labour law enforcement as they are to be spoken about as the cause of such problems. And many civil society, government and international organization actors have embraced their new role, arguing that what’s right for workers and society is compatible with what’s right for businesses’ bottom lines. Indeed, this ‘business case’ for abolishing slavery is a crucial rationale for many initiatives to combat modern slavery.

      Corporations Save the World’s Workers

      In sharp contrast to the era in which Nike’s reliance on child labour was first exposed, corporate actors today play a central role in global labour governance. As already mentioned, multinational corporations (MNCs) like Nike, Apple and Nestlé have enacted a vast array of voluntary initiatives to detect, address and prevent labour exploitation in their supply chains. Companies at the helm of global supply chains include within their codes of conduct specific requirements for suppliers concerning labour standards and use elaborate indexes to score suppliers on labour practices and noncompliance. They develop CSR initiatives, such as Mondelēz International’s Cocoa Life programme. And they write about these in their annual sustainability reports and modern slavery statements, which are produced to comply with recent legislation to spur greater transparency over global supply chains.

In an effort to prevent the embarrassment of incidents like Nike’s child labour scandal, companies now monitor labour standards in global supply chains using social auditors. Most companies hire third party (but typically still for-profit) auditors to monitor working conditions in portions of their supply chains, usually focusing on Tier 1 suppliers. Nike notes in its 2018 Statement on Forced Labor, Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery that it conducted 471 audits and assessments in fiscal year 2018.³⁴ Some companies push the cost of auditing onto suppliers, requiring them to hire auditors and submit results. As Coca-Cola describes it, ‘all of the bottling operations and authorized suppliers selling more than $60,000 annually to the Coca-Cola system are required to complete a third-party audit and share the audit results with The Coca-Cola Company’.³⁵ Many companies also monitor working conditions by providing hotlines for workers to report abuse and by administering mobile phone surveys to workers – measures they describe at sustainability conferences and in their CSR reports as ‘technology-supported worker engagement’.

      In addition, companies seek to address modern slavery through ethical certification schemes like Fairtrade and Rainforest Alliance. As companies have battled media and activist attention towards bad labour practices in their supply chains, many have increased the proportion of their business covered by ethical certification schemes. Some have even achieved full certification. As Tata Global Beverages describes one of its tea brands, Tetley, for instance:

      At the start of 2010, Tetley announced its commitment to purchase all of the tea for its branded tea bag and loose tea products from Rainforest Alliance Certified™ farms. We are pleased to report that in FY17/18, 100% of all Tetley branded black and green tea (Camellia sinensis) and red/rooibos tea (Aspalathus linearis), including flavoured and decaffeinated varieties, sold by TGB is Rainforest Alliance Certified™.³⁶

Ethical certification schemes like Fairtrade can be costly investments. Starbucks, for instance, reports it has paid US$16 million in Fairtrade premiums alone since 2000, as well as US$10 million to ‘Fairtrade licensing initiatives that support the international certification system (FLO-CERT), producer services and awareness building around the benefits of Fairtrade’.³⁷ Big profitable companies can afford the cost of certification; some companies are now double or even triple certifying their supply chains, combining schemes like Fairtrade, Rainforest Alliance and Organic. But for suppliers, who are frequently expected to bear the costs of becoming certified, the price can be exorbitant. One garment factory owner recently declared that, given their high cost for little value and the need to use them in order to stay in business, ‘the certification systems are the mafia’.³⁸

      In addition to auditors and ethical certification companies, corporations also engage a range of other industry actors to support their new and accelerating efforts to combat modern slavery. Big audit firms like Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers are hired by brand companies and manufacturers to provide assurance and advisory services related to transnational labour governance, ranging from supply chain mapping, advisory and risk assessment in relation to labour standards to the establishment of key performance indicators (KPIs) around human trafficking and child labour.³⁹ Deloitte even partnered with an antislavery NGO, Free the Slaves, to publish a report called The Freedom Ecosystem: How the Power of Partnership Can Help Stop Modern Slavery, in which the benefits of soft-law incrementalism and corporate–NGO partnerships are touted. ‘Rather than seeking silver bullets’, the authors urge, ‘organizations looking to contribute to the eradication of slavery should aim to take incremental steps to improve the status quo.’⁴⁰

In addition to working in partnership with consultancy firms, and on their own, corporations are collaborating to promote industry-led solutions to labour abuse through industry associations. The Consumer Goods Forum, for instance, which is made up of 400 retailer and manufacturing companies within the consumer goods industry and works to ‘promote more business growth, business efficiency and positive change’,⁴¹ has recently developed a social resolution on forced labour, which it is advancing by supporting companies to make voluntary commitments and raise awareness.⁴² The Global Business Coalition Against Trafficking brings together major companies, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Carlson and The Coca-Cola Company, to ‘harness the power of business across all sectors to prevent and reduce modern slavery, and support survivors, through collaboration, guidance, and shared resources’.⁴³ These are just a couple of the dozens of recently formed industry collaborations that industry actors claim will help to save the world’s workers.

      As companies have come to occupy greater space within transnational labour governance, NGOs have largely accepted CSR as a legitimate means of finding and addressing labour abuse within supply chains. Despite corporations’ past misconduct, many labour and human rights NGOs are increasingly willing to partner with them towards creating bespoke initiatives to assess standards and improve social and labour conditions in their supply chains. To name just a few examples, Unilever has collaborated with Oxfam to better integrate smallholders within its supply chains;⁴⁴ Marks & Spencer collaborates with and funds initiatives for modern slavery charity Unseen;⁴⁵ and another antislavery charity, Hope for Justice, is partnering with UK retailer Morrisons to develop ‘due diligence and resilience’ for the company.⁴⁶ Some NGOs partner with several corporations at once. For instance, Free the Slaves currently lists Google, Deloitte and AmazonSmile among its partners and sponsors on its website.⁴⁷

      Within global governance arenas, too, corporations are joining coalitions made up of labour and social NGOs to tackle labour governance challenges. The UN Global Compact – advertised as ‘the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative’⁴⁸ – brings around 10,000 companies together with thousands of NGOs, academic organizations, foundations and trade unions.⁴⁹ Of all the voluntary industry initiatives, the UN Global Compact is the one that would have been most unimaginable at the height of the anti-globalization movement. Then, the notion that trade unions and anticorporate NGOs could collaborate and share conference rooms with the oil and mining companies, the big-box retailers, apparel and footwear brands, and food and beverage corporations that they were naming and shaming, protesting and campaigning against would have surely seemed impossible.

In addition to these multistakeholder initiatives, corporations have initiated bilateral partnerships with international organizations. UK retailer Tesco, for instance, partners with UNICEF to ‘improve opportunities for tens of thousands of children in Indian tea communities and reduce their vulnerability to trafficking and abuse’.⁵⁰

      Partnerships between corporations and big business are springing up not just in response to industry initiatives. They are also working the other way, with global governance actors seeking