Part 1
When we think of slavery, we usually think about the term historically. African Americans were enslaved in America, Jews were enslaved by Pharaoh, so and so forth -- essential history lessons that should inform modern thinking, but something out of the past, not today. Unfortunately, this is not the case at all. In fact, even in the US, large retailers such as Home Depot have been accused of indirectly taking advantage of low-prices resulting from slave-labor in their supply chains, despite supplier codes of conduct that (obviously) prohibit such activity. Among other companies in the textile/retail space, Zara has faced similar scrutiny recently
According to one industry source, Zara was accused of running "sweatshops for their outsourced production" and subsequently after the accusation, "closed a factory that produced Zara's clothing for it's poor labor conditions." In this particular case, "Bolivians were brought illegally to Brazil, locked in small apartments and sewed clothes for 12-14 hours a day. They could not leave the apartment without the consent of the supervisor and didn't have hot water for taking showers or food for lunch...Many of the workers were forced into paying their wages to human traffickers who had smuggled them into the country."
We can learn just as much from Zara's response and corrective actions as we can from their transgressions and oversight failure in the first place. This effort goes beyond one-off codes of conduct that suppliers must adhere to. Rather, they rely on adhering to the strictest industry-based standards in the region (e.g., "introduction of a detailed procedure for verifying that any supplier wishing to work with Zara meets the corporate social responsibility criteria applied by ABVTex (initials in Portuguese for the Brazilian Textile Industry Association), the drafting of a Best Practice Guide, in collaboration with the Ethos Institute for the manufacturing sector," etc.).
Zara is also up to some other activities to combat supplier slave-labor employment in Brazil that can serve as a basis for other companies to model their anti-slavery supply programs on. Stay tuned as we investigate these initiatives and other related recommendations in more detail.
Part 2
Supply chain slavery is a topic that's getting more attention than any time in recent memory. CNN and others have covered the topic in detail of late, calling attention to a new website and mobile app "created by the U.S. State Department and a watchdog group" that offers to pinpoint your "slavery footprint." When I went to take the survey last week, I was surprised at the response I got on a site backed by the US government: "Due to overwhelming global traffic on slaveryfootprint.org, we're switching over to servers with 50 times the capacity [as before]. We'll be right back though, so check in soon." Clearly, consumers are more than curious to know their slavery footprint. No doubt, procurement and operations organizations should react to this interest by taking action and rid their supply chains of this type of labor.
In the first installment of this post, we shared some of the programs Zara has undertaken in their Brazilian supply chain to end slavery. We'll continue this analysis today, sharing two strategies Zara has ordered which we feel other organizations should consider as well. The first is the launch of a "dedicated toll-free number" supervised by non-Zara employees, with the "main purpose [being] to create a channel for citizen cooperation through which the company can become aware of and resolve possible irregularities within the shortest possible timeframe." This will also help pinpoint other labor issues within the Zara supply chain.
Additionally, Zara is working closely with an organization, the National Association of Foreign Immigrants in Brazil, to "identify potential sources of instability among immigrant communities and to develop training and skills programs within the textile industry in order to facilitate their integration in the workforce." The importance of monitoring immigration trends in emerging markets can't be overstated. As the illegal trafficking of humans can often result in migrant workers being taken advantage of or even enslaved. Companies doing business in Mexico, China, Vietnam and other global markets should identify local groups to work with in this capacity too.
In the final installment of this post, we'll examine ways that supplier management technologies and data enrichment solutions can help organizations more systematically monitor and mitigate slave labor risk in their supply chains.
