Modern day slavery, including forced labor, child labor, bonded labor, and other types of unethical labor practices affects over 21 million people worldwide and has resulted in over $150 billion in illegal profits. Is there an effective approach companies can utilize to mitigate the risk of slavery in their supply chains?
Supply Chains and Slavery
In the past five years, many countries around the world have passed legislation that push companies to assess the risk of slavery in their supply chains. . In 2010, California became the first state in the US to adopt a formal anti-slavery policy. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, commonly known as Senate Bill (SB) 657 states that any company with revenue greater than $100 million doing business in California must disclose their efforts to mitigate the risk of slavery in their supply chain.
Similar to SB 657, in 2015, the United Kingdom adopted a formal anti-slavery policy, which also functions as a disclosure law. The UK Modern Day Slavery Act states that any company exceeding a revenue threshold of £36 million must outline their efforts in the past year to eradicate slavery from their supply chain. The global effort to end modern day slavery does not stop in the UK - India recently published its first ever draft on modern day slavery to be the first country in the Asian region to push legislation on forced labor in the supply chain.
Companies face the complex task of adopting an anti-human trafficking program that not only addresses their current supply chain, but is scalable and can adapt to their growing business practices.
Leveraging Data to Fight Modern Day Slavery
A crucial backbone of any compliance and supply chain transparency process is accurate, verified data. Accurate supply chain data can place a company in an excellent position to scale an already existing compliance program or adopt a new process. Kristen Sullivan, a partner at Deloitte Advisory recently published an article about utilizing an already existing conflict minerals tracing program to create a robust human trafficking program.
Establishing an anti-human trafficking program that builds on an existing compliance program, like conflict minerals, creates a business advantage. There are many benefits that businesses can experience through this practice, including cost savings, informed decision making, and the development of scalable, sustainable business practices. Analyzing existing supply chain data can help companies identify areas of high risk in the supply chain, a good starting point for a comprehensive anti-human trafficking compliance program.
Source Intelligence, the industry leader in supply chain compliance and sustainability, will be hosting a webinar on November 15th, 2016 to discuss strategies in developing an anti-human trafficking program.
