How could we transform the risk of modern slavery practices across supply chains (SCs) during the pandemic into an opportunity to eliminate them?
The opportunity lies in changing for the better as soon as the crisis is over. Modern slavery and human trafficking are social vices, and the prevention of them have to be a significant public concern. We all have a role to play.
Multiple business leaders, as civil society organisations, requested governments to take advantage of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) programs which provide a proposal to eradicate inequality and poverty and put job innovation, health, wellbeing at the core of Covid-19 recovery plans.
There is no need to reinvent agendas or contracts; we can as an alternative to making use of global goals as the starting point for a worldwide socially just and green recovery. These goals are significant frameworks to make sure businesses and governments take an active part in the long-term public measures that look beyond profit and engage in broader social purposes.
The disruption caused by the crisis has affected our SCs, interrupting the delivering of some products, plus travel restrictions in most countries causing falls in consumer demand because of lockdown. It may lead to vulnerable people exploited to fill the shortage. Now is the time to be proactive!
For instance, to meet health requirements for surgical gloves production industries urge their workforce to work longer hours, paying lower wedges and not allowing them to leave their workplace with the intention to meet the enormous demand for certain goods. In some other industries, the laid-off of workers has been a common practice; children are forced into work or prostitution to help their families subsist. Travel restraints drive to a shortage of seasonal employee to pick up the harvest. Additionally, there is a lack of talent participating.
Organisations need to review their SCs for possible risk of human trafficking and modern slavery, and need to commit to a transparent Supply Chain Statement focusing on the eradication of slavery; unluckily, numerous organisations first committed, no longer went along. Others only look at the nearest supplier (Tier 1) rather than the complete SC. It is time to help create a ‘socially just recovery.’
What do these organisations should do?
· Review their SC to consider the possible new risk of human trafficking or slavery.
· Talk their expectancies over considering working specifications, hiring terms, salary, limitations on overtime shifts, recruitment policies, with direct suppliers and contractors, all through the SC.
· Make it clear that the condition of any future contract has to be proof of fair and befitting employment conditions in conformity with the law, both in the supplier's country of and the purchaser'.
· Go over hiring conditions often to guarantee compliance, like local visits once travel constraints revoked.
· To honour past contracts to avoid cancelling orders or stick to prices already settled.
These practices are related not only to the manufacturing, hospitality, retail, or agricultural sectors but to the finance industry, including accountants; there is a risk of modern slavery in all these areas. Consumers and investors play a role too in holding organisations into accountability.
The focus on end-to-end SC visibility must go beyond orders, shipment and inventory; it must include labour practices, safety, environmental and legal practices across the SC to create SCs socially responsible, by fostering a more granulated understanding.
Adding up: multiple organisations around the globe linked to human-right exploitations comprised top brands, like component suppliers or textile makers, working with banned industries which sell goods illegally to these firms. Blocking them is social responsibility.
Why not compromise to an end-to-end Supply Chain visibility that protects our workforce from modern slavery and human trafficking?
Dave Food
Prophetic Technology
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