Are brands facing up to human slavery and exploitation? And do they have the power to stop it?

[updated Sept 23, 2020]

In light of the recent Black Lives Matter protests, we are starting to re-look at human values, exploitation, diversity and prejudice.

Personally. I think the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston should have gone into the river years ago.

Modern day slavery in plain sight

“Today, 167 countries still have slavery, affecting about 46 million people.” (The Global Slavery Index),. Many of them involved in delivering your cheap clothes, food, cosmetics and other household items. That's more than in the days of William Wilberforce.

Modern slavery encompasses:

• Slavery
• Human trafficking
• Servitude
• Forced or compulsory labour

Under a new Government initiative, organisations in the UK with budgets of ￡36m or more (including local authorities) would be required to report on the steps they have taken to prevent modern slavery in supply chains. 

The Government said, “This is to ensure responsible practises in supply chains and bring it in line with businesses”. Organisations will be required to publish modern slavery statements on a “digital government reporting service”. 

READ MORE: https://tinyurl.com/y2sfywqw [CIPS]

MODERN DAY ECONOMICS – DEMAND FOR CHEAPER PRODUCTS = A GREATER SUPPLY OF EXPLOITED LABOUR.

The unfortunate reality is, those big brands with their big marketing budgets are also part of the problem. Consumers want more for less and that means a cheaper supply chain - which means brands need to buy cheaper – which can mean human rights get abused.

The latest scandal involving sweatshops in Leicester has cost Boohoo a lot - it's share price dropped by a third and it lost ￡1.3bn in value.

One area that enslaves workers is tea. It wouldn’t cost much more (remember the worker gets a fraction of the cost) to give tea pickers a fair wage and decent conditions. The recent Traidcraft Exchange’s campaign, “Who’s picked my tea” challenges consumers to challenge the big tea brands – many of which have still not signed up to their campaign against worker exploitation.

https://www.traidcraft.org.uk/tea-campaign/

200 YEARS ON AND SLAVERY IS ON THE INCREASE. WHY?

The British campaign to abolish the slave trade (we were one of the worse abusers) dates back as far as 1780 with the establishment of the Quakers' anti-slavery committees. Between 1700 and 1810 alone, British merchants transported almost three million Africans across the Atlantic, and that was just part of the trade.

MP William Wilberforce (who I played in a school play and was responsible my conversion to ethics) worked with the Testonites (an influential group of English abolitionists) but it took until 1807 when the Slave Trade Act was passed before anything could be done, followed by the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833. These were not easy acts to pass as they were opposed by many big merchants and companies, and as today, “profits come before people for too many businesses.” Pro-slavery advocates at the time claimed that enslaved “Africans were lesser human beings who benefited from their bondage”. 

"Over 200 years later we have slavery and worker abuse on a scale unknown to Wilberforce and his campaigners, and it’s getting worse. Slavery is the fastest growing organised crime in the world."

Well over 46 million people are estimated to be trapped in modern slavery worldwide: 1 in 4 of them are children. Almost three quarters (71%) are women and girls.

There are over 15 million people working in the garment industry in Asia alone, many are poorly paid, and many not even getting a living wage just so that we can have cheap fashion.

And millions working in tea plantations, another industry rife with abuse. And if your product of desire uses palm oil, you could be supporting child labour.

“Despite impressive improvements in reducing child labour there is still a high prevalence of child labour in Asia, with more than 62 million children, of whom more than 28 million are engaged in the worst forms.”

Beate Andrees, Chief of the ILO’s Fundamentals Principles and Rights at Work Branch.

So the next time you watch that glossy ad for a fashion brand, before you click to buy, ask yourself Who made that outfit and how well paid were they? What were their working conditions like? What do they wear to work? Can they afford to feed their kids?

Someone worked out that as every stage of the supply chain doubles the cost, it would therefore only cost 5% more on the price of a fashion item to give the maker a living wage. Check out “The True Cost of Cotton.” https://ejfoundation.org/what-we-do/cotton/the-true-costs-of-cotton

 Would you be happy to pay ￡10.50 instead of ￡10 for a t-shirt, knowing the maker can feed their kids properly and doesn’t need to work 60 hours a week in a sweatshop?

A SOCIETY OF CHANGING VALUES.

 Numerous research shows that Millennials and Gen Zs all want to make a positive difference to the environment and, more importantly, to people. Concern for people is twice as important as environmentalism to consumers. But this is not exclusive to this generation. Most of us do care, it’s just we either turn a blind eye or simply don’t know. But if we started to challenge brands and retailers, things could change.

 These values are starting to carry through to consumer values, “a pound in the pocket is now being used to make a point, not just a purchase.” Boycotts are plentiful among younger people and brands associated with worker abuse are losing business and profits.

ARE BIG BRANDS WALKING THE WALK OR JUST TALKING?

The concept of the Triple Bottom Line – People, Profit, Planet as equal values has been around for over two decades (coined in 1994 by John Elkington) but few have really adopted it. As one writer commented “The triple bottom line has become just profit, profit, profit for some.”

 CSR – Corporate Social Responsibility - has had various peaks of popularity but for some it’s known as Corporate Spin and Rhetoric.

 Corporate Purpose has had a recent popularity, especially since Lord John Browne’s collaboration with McKinsey highlighted the need for companies to “radically engage with society” and communities. His book, CONNECT, is a best seller and a must read.

In today’s always on, over connected society, no brand can ignore their community of consumers. Community engagement (B2C2) is top of the list, way above traditional marketing. The hierarchy of brand and consumer has flipped and now the brands need to listen, respond and respect their consumers and communities in a different way.

While many brands talk about how they are helping save the planet or stopping exploitation, along come news stories that tell a very different story.

Take the Palm Oil scandal - Wilmar’s exploitation of child labour, 2016, revealed by Amnesty International involved many top consumer brands.

Or the 2013 Rana Plaza collapse of a sweatshop in Bangladesh - 1,134 people died, over 2,500 were injured. It turned out they were making products for top fashion brands. Many, like Benetton, Primark, Mango, Matalan, Bon Marche, C&A and others, initially denying they knew anything about it. True or false, the public and media didn’t believe them. Numerous communities on and off line went into action, organising boycotts, protests, fundraisers and sharing the horror stories.

[Note: evidence that the sweatshops were supplying Benetton was found in the rubble. Other brands listed come from CleanClothesCampaign.org]

A team of researchers from NYU Stern Centre for Business and Human Rights began an investigation which resulted in a report entitled "Business as Usual Is Not an Option: Supply Chains & Sourcing after Rana Plaza." A further report, written by the same group, found only 8 of 3,425 factories inspected had "Remedied violations enough to pass a final inspection" despite the international community's $280 million commitment to clean up Bangladesh's RMG industry. Yet they continue to supply the high street.

5 years ago, MP Michael Connarty called on the UK Government to push through new legislation to end modern day slavery by forcing major High Street companies in the UK to audit their supply chain. The framework required those companies involved to make vigorous checks to ensure slave labour was not being used in third world countries and the UK to produce their goods. Echoes of William Wilberforce?

ARE BRANDS STUCK BETWEEN A ROCK AND HARD PLACE?

It’s hard for brands, from fashion to FMCG, who may deal with tens of thousands of suppliers, to police their supply chain. Inspectors can easily be deceived if they are not native to a region. Business owners may not be cooperative (not all suppliers can be forced to abide by guidelines by big brands as many sell to a wide variety of companies). Regulations and laws can be dodged (as in India with tea plantations). And corruption and fear remains a key weapon for exploiters to keep the exploited quiet.

“When auditors come for inspection... we’re nervous and can’t tell them the truth... Out of fear, we say that we get all the facilities and that everything is ok.”

Maloti, Assam tea worker. (Traidcraft Exchange campaign)

People like Maloti work long hours, carrying heavy loads, often without proper equipment or even shoes. Workers are paid just ￡1.50 a day, and the services the estates are supposed to provide – like housing, toilets, showers, washing facilities, clinics and schools – are often poor quality or even non-existent. Yet a lot of what they pick gets sold to British tea companies who turn a blind eye.

Understanding local culture is also important, it’s easy to apply a Western model to everything forgetting that different values apply in different countries. It’s also one reason many schemes fail. In some countries kids go to work much younger than in the UK and help to support families. Many parts of Asia has a different work ethic. 

Charities like Amnesty, War on Want, ActionAid and Human Rights Watch are just a few trying to police exploitation and naming and shaming brands they feel knowing ignore problems.

CHALLENGING THE BRANDS IS THE BEST STRATEGY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

ActionAid’s highly acclaimed ‘WHO PAYS?’ campaign – “When you pick an apple off the shelf, do you wonder who picked it off the tree?” - asked consumers to challenge supermarkets to reveal who was paying for the discount on fruit. No prize for guessing it wasn’t the supermarkets. The discount was being pushed down the supply chain all the way to the pickers.

Over 44,000 consumers signed up to the loyalty card pledge and within weeks supermarkets were forced to change their exploitative ways. (Now that result is better than winning ten D&AD Golds).

Traidcraft Exchange’s ‘Who Picked My Tea’ campaign (which is very similar to ActionAid’s ‘Who Pays?’ campaign) has challenged all tea brands to pledge to avoid exploitation of tea workers, especially in the Assam region (but exploittaion is wide spread across the tea industry). Not many have signed up yet, which from the public’s viewpoint casts suspicion upon brands that haven’t. A classic case of what you do or don’t do speaking volumes.

https://www.traidcraft.org.uk/tea-campaign/

NEW SOLUTIONS.

 In some ways it’s an almost impossible task, but two possible new innovative ideas are BlockTails and Tri-Community schemes.

BlockTail is essentially Blockchain technology (‘distributed ledger technology’ or DLT) used to track a product from its very beginnings, which might be a farm in South Africa or a tea plantation in India, to the retail shelf.

The first FMCG company that empowered consumers to use it was an Italian tinned tomato supplier. You simply scan the bar code (or use the LOT number) and you can discover the original farm your tomatoes came from. Since then numerous companies have copied it, but it’s easy to abuse and fake the chain, showing a nice bunch of smiling workers instead of enslaved ones. Even so, it does engage consumers to start to take an interest in the source of their products and produce and helps to help create transparency, which in turn applies pressure on suppliers to be more ethical.

Tri-Community? (created by CONNECT 2) takes a very different approach and engages the supplier, local community (where many employees come from) and the end consumer. Through shared responsibility, it creates an open platform of engagement that can prevent exploitation, encourage whistle blowing and uses consumer empowerment to enforce values. Being community based, it embraces human values, reduces the psychology of impersonalisation (and dehumanisation) and also engages local community groups, critical to the original abolition of slavery.

STOP THE TRAFFIK is a pioneer in human trafficking prevention. Working to unite people around the world by inspiring, informing, equipping and mobilising communities to know what human trafficking is, know how to identify it and know how to respond appropriately if they saw it. have developed the STOP app that allows people to report suspicions of slavery. By using intel and data they can start to create a picture of slavery happening.

IT’S NOT WHAT YOU SAY BUT WHAT YOU DO THAT GENERATES CONSUMER TRUST.

Today consumers judge brands not by the sales talk but by actions. It’s not just the press but the bloggers, influencers, opinionators, social media and word of mouth that is judge and jury. A brand can’t hide behind “we didn’t know”. The reality is, you should know.

Research shows that people trust brands that act, not just talk. Brands that show genuine intent not just rhetoric. M&S’s Plan A was successful because the consumer saw real actions, and heard it from the boss (Stuart Rose) not from the PR department. Meanwhile Tesco’s hammers farmers prices down so hard that many go broke, so it’s no wonder they don’t rate well on the scale of ethics.

GOOD BEHAVOUR = GOOD BUSINESS

 The resistance of many brands to embrace ethics has been a fear of greater cost but the reality is proving it makes greater profits.

Both Unilever and P&G claim their more ethical brands are out performing their other brands.

Unilever have just taken the lead on anti-slavery, to quote: “According to Anti-Slavery International: “It is near certain that slavery can be found in a supply chain in every single company.” Their commitment to clean up supply chains sets a new standard others need to follow.

It is hard to imagine that in today’s sophisticated world exploitation seems to be on the rise, not in decline. But as we are part of the problem so we need to be part of the solution.

“The lust for money is the route of all evil”

is not exclusively a religious quote, it’s also a cautionary business one. And so often exploitation and abuse happens locally by people within the community not by boards of Fortune 500 companies.

 As a consumer we may feel unable to make significant change, but as a community we are empowered to demand it and force it. While there are many brands that will exploit anyone to make a dollar, more and more like Unilever, are integrating real ethics into their business models, and proving it makes for good business too.

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Chris Arnold is a Dr of Business and co-founder of CONNECT 2 (the UK’s leading community engagement marketing agency) He is also founder of ethical marketing agency, Creative Orchestra and The Garage Innovation Lab.

He is author of Ethical Marketing & The New Consumer (published by Wileys) and has written the Brand Republic blog on ethics for over a decade as well as for Third Sector magazine, FT, Marketing, Campaign, Adage, Brand Strategy, Creative Review, Impact and numerous publications.

Chris was part of the team that created the WHO PAYS? campaign for ActionAid. He has worked on over 30 charities (including Traidcraft), NGOs, CSR and numerous community projects.

To feedback email: [email protected]

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LINKS

https://www.stopthetraffik.org/

https://cleanclothes.org/livingwage

https://www.ilo.org/global/lang--en/index.htm

Unilever report: What’s the human price paid for the goods we consume?

https://www.unilever.com/news/news-and-features/Feature-article/2018/whats-the-human-price-paid-for-the-goods-we-consume.html

Traidcraft Exchange https://www.traidcraft.org.uk/tea-campaign/

Stop The Traffick - Tea Report : https://bisinfo.lexisnexis.co.uk/hubfs/LexisNexis_and_Stop_the_Traffik_Tea_Report.pdf?utm_campaign=BIS%20Blog&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=BIS%20Blog

“The True Cost of Cotton.” https://ejfoundation.org/what-we-do/cotton/the-true-costs-of-cotton

Tri-Community + BlockTail (CONNECT 2) www.connect-b2c2.co.uk

Word Count 2412 ?Chris Arnold 2018