German sportswear giant Adidas AG led the pack as four companies on Wednesday won a global award for shining a light on their own supply chains to eradicate modern slavery from their operations.
Adidas was revealed as the overall winner of the second Thomson Reuters Foundation Stop Slavery Award, which celebrates businesses that excel in efforts to identify, investigate and root out forced labor from their supply chains.
Global fashion retailer C&A, US technology company Intel Corp and British retail and services group The Co-operative Group Ltd (The Co-op) were the other winners of the annual award designed by Turner Prize winning sculptor Anish Kapoor.
With modern slavery increasingly dominating headlines worldwide, businesses are under increasing pressure from both governments and consumers to disclose what actions they are taking to ensure their supply chains are free from slavery.
About 25 million people globally were estimated to be trapped in forced labor in 2016, the International Labour Organization and rights group Walk Free Foundation said.
“While we have outsourced our production and manufacturing all over the world, we will not outsource our moral responsibility, which is to do right by the 1.3 million workers who make our products,” Adidas social and environmental affairs senior manager Aditi Wanchoo said at the Thomson Reuters Foundation’s annual Trust Conference.
The winners were chosen from a shortlist of 15 companies that employ millions of people worldwide in sectors ranging from electronics and hospitality to retail and mining and included British multinational bank Barclays PLC, Nestle SA and Wal-Mart Stores.
The shortlist was selected after businesses completed a detailed questionnaire, designed in partnership with human rights specialists at multi-national law firm Baker & McKenzie, giving details about their operations.
An independent specialist assessed the company submissions on the strength of anti-trafficking policies already in place, as well as their ability to identify and respond to problems.
Adidas, which is the world’s second-biggest sportswear firm, was hailed for its transparent audits, strong responsible sourcing guidelines, and robust tools to trace higher-risk supply chains.
The sportswear giant was one of the world’s first companies to create a role dedicated to fighting slavery and uses technology to encourage workers to speak out about any abuses.
The Co-op was honored for having excelled in business partnership and supplier engagement and won praise for its “Brighter Future” program, which aims to offer jobs to 30 slavery and trafficking victims in Britain.
“We want to go further than our own supply chains in tackling modern slavery,” The Co-op deputy chief executive Pippa Wicks said.
Intel, the world’s largest computer chipmaker, was awarded for its innovation, in particular an initiative that leverages the company’s data analytics and uses artificial intelligence to combat child sexual exploitation in the US.
The company has openly discussed its anti-slavery efforts, and refused new business with several suppliers who have failed to implement measures to combat forced labor, the judges said.
C&A, which was praised by the judges for going beyond compliance standards in all categories, called for more collaboration between brands, governments and civil society to implement projects which tackle slavery in source countries.
The C&A Foundation, affiliated with the retailer, is in a partnership with the Thomson Reuters Foundation on trafficking.
The Stop Slavery Award was won last year by multinational tech companies Hewlett Packard Enterprise and NXP Semiconductors.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day
Thousands of parents in Singapore are furious after a Cordlife Group Ltd (康盛人生集團), a major operator of cord blood banks in Asia, irreparably damaged their children’s samples through improper handling, with some now pursuing legal action. The ongoing case, one of the worst to hit the largely untested industry, has renewed concerns over companies marketing themselves to anxious parents with mostly unproven assurances. This has implications across the region, given Cordlife’s operations in Hong Kong, Macau, Indonesia, the Philippines and India. The parents paid for years to have their infants’ cord blood stored, with the understanding that the stem cells they contained