California’s New Anti-Human Trafficking Law
California’s Transparency in Supply Chains Act (SB657) went into effect on January 1st, 2012. Retailers and Manufacturers with over $100 million in revenues will now have to disclose on their websites what they are doing to prevent slavery and trafficking in their supply chains all the way down to the dirt.
Companies will have to report if they are doing the following:
– Engage in verification of product supply chains to evaluate and address risk of trafficking and slavery;
– Conduct audits of suppliers for compliance with company standards regarding trafficking and slavery;
– Require Direct Suppliers to certify that material incorporated into the product complies with laws regarding slavery and human trafficking where supplier does business;
– Maintain internal accountability standards and procedures for those failing to meet the company’s standards;
– Provide training on human trafficking and slavery, particularly with respect to mitigation risk within the supply chain of products.
Investors issued a guidance document for implementing the California law and going beyond to embrace an entire human rights framework.
January 23rd, 2012 1:10 PM
New California Law Combats Human Slavery via Supply Chain Trasparency
By Rachel Cernansky
January is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, a time to educate people that slavery existstoday and build support for the fight to stop it. But this January also happens to be the month that a new law in California has come into effect, the first of its kind in the U.S., and one that has the potential to do more than just raise awareness of human trafficking and actually make a real dent in the problem itself.
Human trafficking and forced labor are largely hidden problems, but they persist in just about every country in the world (including in the U.S.) whether it’s in cotton fields that feed our demand for clothing or in factories where our electronics are assembled. As consumers, we are all connected to human trafficking and slavery through the goods we use every day. But a large hurdle in eradicating slavery is how disconnected those final products are from the conditions that produced them. Read more >>
Wednesday, January 18 2012
Contact:Laurel Sutherlin, 415.246.0161
New California Slave Labor Law (SB 657) To Expose Ugly Side of Many Common Commodities; Impact 3200 Companies
Advocacy groups say slave labor connected to palm oil, chocolate and cotton production will provide initial test cases for compliance with the new Transparency in Supply Chains Act
San Francisco, CA - Leading environmental and corporate social responsibility organizations say that chronic human rights abuses associated with popular products like chocolate and cotton tee shirts will join controversial food additive palm oil to provide initial test cases for companies striving to comply with California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act (SB 657). The new law that went into effect Jan 1st, 2012, requires retailers and manufacturers to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chains. The law applies to all corporations doing business in California with more than $100 million in worldwide gross receipts – an estimated 3,200 companies.
A roundtable focused on the new California law was held at the Bay Area Council in San Francisco on January 6th and was attended by advocacy organizations, attorneys, state representatives and executives from several Bay Area corporations, including Hewlett-Packard, McKesson, PG&E, Levi Strauss, Gap Inc. and Safeway. Following the roundtable, representatives of Rainforest Action Network, Responsible Sourcing Network and Green America issued the following statements.
Rainforest Action Network’s (RAN’s) Forest Program Director Lindsey Allen commented:
“California’s new law is designed to give consumers the information they need to make more informed choices about what products they buy. In addition to the widespread destruction of rainforests that result from palm oil production, it has been clear for many years that slave labor, debt bondage and human rights abuses on plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia are part of what has made palm oil into the cheap and ubiquitous food additive it is today. In 2010, the US Dept. of Labor confirmed this by placing palm oil from Malaysia and Indonesia on its List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor.
It is past time that companies like agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. acknowledge the true costs of palm oil and this law’s transparency requirements are a first step. The law’s mandate that companies report what they are or are not doing to address slave labor in their supply chains will help to publicly distinguish corporate leaders from laggards when it comes to aligning products with the values consumers care most about.”
Green America’s Fair Trade Campaigns Director, Elizabeth O’Connell said:
“For more than ten years, consumers have called on chocolate companies to take more responsibility for their supply chains and ensure that forced, trafficked, and child labor were not used to harvest their cocoa beans. While some companies have taken voluntary steps to prevent labor abuses, such as third party certification, other major companies, including Hershey, continue to drag their feet. The passage of California’s SB657 will require that all companies disclose what they are doing to prevent labor abuse in their supply chains, and therefore, pressure laggards like Hershey to finally address these issues.
Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) Director Patricia Jurewicz said,
“Investors are looking for more than just the transparency this statute requires. Even more important to investors will be seeing the new steps companies are taking to minimize reputational risks and be proactive in eliminating slavery from the products they sell. For example, we are tracking for the investment community if companies have signed our pledge and are participating in our initiative to stop forced child labor in the cotton fields of Uzbekistan.”
For more information:
The US Dept. of Labor 2011 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor
http://www.dol.gov/ilab/programs/ocft/PDF/2011TVPRA.pdf
Effective Supply Chain Accountability: Investor Guidance on Implementation of The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act and Beyond
http://www.iccr.org/issues/subpages/pdf/11.17.11SupplyChainGuide.pdf
Compliance is Not Enough: Best Practices in Responding to The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act
http://www.verite.org/sites/default/files/VTE_WhitePaper_California_Bill657FINAL5.pdf
Rainforest Action Network runs hard-hitting campaigns to break North America’s fossil fuels addiction, protect endangered forests and Indigenous rights, and stop destructive investments around the world through education, grassroots organizing, and non-violent direct action. For more information, please visit: www.ran.org.
Green America is the nation’s leading green economy organization. Founded in 1982, Green America (formerly Co-op America) provides the economic strategies, organizing power and practical tools for businesses and individuals to solve today’s social and environmental problems. For more information, go to: http://www.GreenAmerica.org.
Responsible Sourcing Network is a project of the non-profit organization As You Sow. RSN addresses human rights violations and environmental destruction in the supply chains of consumer products at the raw commodity level. For more information, please visit www.sourcingnetwork.org.
10th November 2011
Uzbek cotton: Time to drive child labour from value chains
A child free zone by Patricia Jurewicz
Stronger legislation and successful awareness raising are helping in the fight to eradicate child labour from cotton’s supply chain, says Patricia Jurewicz
During the recent International Cotton and Textile Fair in Tashkent, not a single western buyer signed a contract for Uzbekistan’s cotton, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. This boycott demonstrates the strength of a pledge signed by more than 60 apparel manufacturers, brands and retailers to eliminate forced child labour in the cotton industry.
Many companies have implemented policies banning Uzbek cotton from their value chains and some have started to pilot or adopt value chain traceability practices to enforce these policies.
Still, tracing the origin of cotton fibre remains a challenge for the industry. According to the WSJ article, Russian buyers bought 40% of the Uzbek cotton available during the fair, with the remaining 60% going to buyers in China, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Japan, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan, South Korea and Singapore.
Child labour scrutiny
Since the cotton passes through the opaque hands of numerous traders, spinners, weavers and sewers before it is packaged and sold, this cotton could eventually find its way into shirts or socks in western markets.
Now is the time for fashion industry leaders to scrutinise their value chains down to the dirt. It’s been nearly five years since retailers first started speaking out against forced child labour in Uzbekistan and we need to continue to make change through the power of unified coalitions.
Having buy-in throughout the entire global value chain, where all of the dots are connected, is essential. The time of transparency has come. Consumers and legislation are demanding it.
Consumers are demanding to know more about the goods they are purchasing and, thankfully, new technologies are being adopted to give this information to them right at the point of purchase.
Appropriate technology
An app from GoodGuide allows consumers to use a smartphone’s built-in camera to scan product barcodes and receive ratings regarding health, environment and social responsibility. Other emerging platforms include a crowd-sourced directory of product value chains and carbon footprints through SourceMap. And Free2Work just introduced an app that rates companies based on their efforts to address forced and child labour in its value chains.
Other websites looking to provide more data on human rights and/or environmental sustainability in product value chains include Products of Slavery, Slavery Footprint, Earthster, FootPrinted, Sustainable Apparel Coalition and the Sustainability Consortium.
Soon it will not just be socially responsible investors or NGOs who are ranking and rewarding companies for their environmental, social and governance efforts. Consumers will be able to reward companies at the checkout counter as well. Be forewarned: it’s a matter of months if not days.
Transparency demands
Furthermore, US legislation is starting to demand more transparency. The California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (SB 657) applies to retail sellers and manufacturers operating in California with over $100m in annual worldwide gross receipts. These companies will be required to publicly disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their direct value chains for tangible goods beginning in 2012. A similar law is now being introduced at the US federal level (HR 2759).
For companies to address the violations in Uzbekistan, comply by the California law and prepare themselves for greater disclosure for consumers, they will need to strengthen their relationships with the other participants buried in their value chains.
A first step is to understand the challenges of the spinning factories and textile mills.
Why not visit the spinning, weaving or knitting factories and talk to the staff. Are they using Uzbek cotton? What characteristics do they like about it? Do they have alternatives so they don’t have to buy it? What are their biggest obstacles to overcome so they stop purchasing Uzbek cotton?
Cooperate with mills
Working on the Uzbek cotton issues for the past five years, Responsible Sourcing Network (RSN) recently started Strategic Mills and Spinners Initiative (SMSI), a project to address these questions.
RSN is coordinating a group of companies to approach an aggregated list of mills to start working through the challenges of identifying and avoiding Uzbek cotton. More companies are invited to join, since addressing issues at the conventional cotton harvesting level and tracing it through the complex global value chain is too burdensome for any one company to resolve alone.
We’ve just witnessed the power of partnerships in our coalition of the 60 brands signing the pledge coupled with a half dozen NGOs working to end child slavery. The result: not one western contract for Uzbekistan cotton.
Technology, legislation, and momentum around egregious abuses make the time ripe to start creating an industry-wide transparent accountability process. Now is the time to commit to breaking the slavery chain secretly imbedded in the value chain. Together, we can take real action.
And then, just hopefully, this will be the last editorial you’ll read on forced child labour in Uzbekistan.
Patricia Jurewicz is the director of the Responsible Sourcing Network .The Responsible Sourcing Network is a project of As You Sow. RSN’s mission is to foster global value chains that are accountable to the people and natural habitats they touch at the raw commodity level. RSN is presently working to end forced child labour in Uzbekistan’s cotton industry, and transform the conflict minerals trade in Democratic Republic of the Congo.
GEP Roundtable: How to Comply with New Anti-Human Trafficking Law
