Читать книгу Combatting Modern Slavery - Genevieve LeBaron - Страница 14

Labour exploitation is endemic in several industries and global supply chains today, including more minor forms like wage theft and forced overtime, as well as the worst forms of labour exploitation typically described as forced labour, human trafficking and modern slavery. The worst forms of exploitation tend to thrive more in some portions of supply chains than in others, and among certain types of businesses.⁶⁰ Further, there are predictable and stable patterns regarding the workers who become vulnerable to it.

As I substantiate in Chapter 2, labour exploitation does not occur randomly or spontaneously in global supply chains. Rather, it is a logical outcome of the ways that contemporary supply chains are set up, and, more broadly, of the high-volume, low-cost business model of retail production that powers the global economy. It can be linked to political economic drivers. These include both the factors that trigger a business demand for forced labour, as well as those that create a supply of workers who become vulnerable to it.

On the demand side, a variety of pressures that lie at the heart of global supply chains as they are currently constituted create a demand among businesses for exploited labour. These include irresponsible sourcing practices, which put severe cost and time pressures on suppliers, leading to steep financial penalties for delayed orders and missed deadlines. This can lead to risky practices like unauthorized subcontracting, and to outsourcing along both product and labour supply chains, which makes oversight over labour standards difficult, in part because it fragments responsibility for workers across multiple businesses and agents.⁶¹ As the architects of global supply chains, MNCs bear sizable responsibility for business pressures experienced by suppliers, and the forms of exploitation that result from them. If they were serious about tackling labour exploitation, rather than setting up elaborate CSR programmes, corporations would alter their business practices.

On the supply side, across recent decades, political economy dynamics have created a supply of workers who are vulnerable to forced labour and overlapping forms of exploitation. These include: poverty, including among workers in lucrative supply chains; discrimination on the basis of social identity, such as race, gender and sexuality; lack of labour protections, which means that many workers face barriers to collective action and the exertion of their rights; and restrictive mobility regimes, which leave migrant workers unprotected. These dynamics have intensified in the latest era of global capitalism, as political elites and business actors have transformed the rules of the global economy in ways that privilege the profitability of businesses.

Understanding the complex political economy dynamics that give rise to labour exploitation in global supply chains is vital if we are to grasp the weaknesses within prevailing initiatives to tackle it. In particular, it is essential to understand the disjuncture between the patterns of labour exploitation and the design and enforcement patterns of industry-led initiatives, which tend to circumvent the portions of supply chains in which exploitation is known to manifest and thrive.