Combatting Modern Slavery

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Genevieve LeBaron. Combatting Modern Slavery

Contents

Guide

Pages

Combatting Modern Slavery. Why Labour Governance Is Failing and What We Can Do About It

Copyright page

Acknowledgements

1 Who Does Labour Governance Work For?

What is Labour Governance?

What is Modern Slavery?

Why Global Labour Governance Is Failing

This Book’s Approach

Corporations as Cause and Solution to Labour Abuse

Corporations Save the World’s Workers

This Book’s Arguments and Structure

Labour exploitation in global supply chains

Corporate power and the state

The recruitment industry

The enforcement industry

Corporate Fairytales vs. Worker Power

Notes

2 Labour Exploitation in Global Supply Chains

What Is Forced Labour?

The Business Demand for Forced Labour

Outsourcing

Irresponsible Sourcing Practices

A Supply of Vulnerable Workers

Designed to Fail

The Global Business of Forced Labour

Notes

3 Corporate Power and the State

The Contemporary MNC

Corporate growth and the new monopolies

The financialization of the firm

Structural constraints on labour costs

Corporations and the State

States as the architects of corporations’ growing power

Corporate antislavery activism

CSR as a political weapon

The Politics of Corporate Efforts to Combat Modern Slavery

Notes

4 The Recruitment Industry

A Market for Recruitment

Supply-side factors

Demand-side factors

Mobility regimes and government regulation of the recruitment industry

Here come the corporates

The Rise of Ethical Recruitment Initiatives

What are ethical recruitment initiatives and why aren’t they working?

Lack of enforcement and accountability

Failure to tackle root causes

Sidelining workers

Monitoring Unethical Recruitment

Notes

5 The Enforcement Industry

The Problems with Social Auditing

The rise of big audit firms

Long and complex enforcement supply chains

Secrecy and a lack of transparency

Liability of social auditors

Ineffectiveness of social auditing

Widespread awareness of audit shortcomings

The Problems with Ethical Certification

Certifying exploitation

Why doesn’t ethical certification eradicate forced labour?

Misleading Consumers, Undermining Public Governance

Notes

6 Protecting Twenty-First-Century Workers

Trading in Fairytales for Real Change

How to Fix Labour Governance: Paths Forward

Addressing the Business Demand for Forced Labour

Transform business models and redistribute value

Enforce existing laws

Strengthen due diligence

Regulate supply chains

Regulate the enforcement industry

Worker-driven social responsibility

Rebalance corporate and worker power

Addressing the Supply of Vulnerable Workers

Living wages and social protection

Expand unions and organizing

Strengthen protections for low-wage and migrant work

Regulate the recruitment industry

Conclusion

Notes

Index

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Genevieve LeBaron

My colleagues and friends at the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), especially fellow members of our Corporations Reading Group, have made writing this book exciting and a less lonely task than it would have been otherwise. They helped me to sharpen ideas and tackle parts of the global economy that I wouldn’t otherwise have been bold enough to write about. Thanks especially to Andrew Gamble, Colin Hay, Andreas Rühmkorf, Michael Jacobs, Scott Lavery, Jon Gamu, Liam Stanley, Andrew Hindmoor, Tony Payne, Owen Parker, Natalie Langford, Ellie Gore, Remi Edwards, Ed Pemberton, Patrick Kaczmarczyk and Charline Sempéré. I feel lucky to have such wonderful colleagues who reciprocate my enthusiasm for researching labour and corporations.

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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’.

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