Fri, Nov 20, 2015 page15

• All companies use slave labor, Tesco says

  FUTILE ACTIVISM: Boycotting companies that adhere to unsafe working conditions makes matters only worse, leading to mass unemployment, a company director said

  • Thomson Reuters Foundation, LONDON
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  All businesses around the world have some form of slave labor in their supply chains, but companies can find ways to eradicate this abuse, a senior official from Britain’s biggest retailer, Tesco PLC, said on Wednesday.

  The UN’s International Labour Organization estimates 21 million people worldwide are trapped in forced labor, generating US$150 billion in illegal profits in the farming, fishing, mining, construction and sex industries.

  Force forced labor often lurks along the supply chain with multiple suppliers in many different nations involved in manufacturing, packaging and distributing products, campaigners say.

  “I think all corporations have slavery in their supply chains and some of those instances are absolutely horrific,” Tesco responsible sourcing director Giles Bolton said.

  “Sometimes it can be the case, that the pressure of the competition can lead to some of those problems, but for the most part [businesses are] part of the solution,” he told a Trust Women conference on women’s rights and trafficking organized by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

  Speaking on a panel about cleaning supply chains of slave labor, Bolton said it was no good for companies to boycott countries such as Bangladesh, where more than 1,100 people died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in 2013.

  The tragedy, which sparked urgent demands for global retailers to ensure the safety of workers, dealt a severe blow to the poor South Asian nation where millions depend on the garment industry for an income. Up to 150,000 people lost their jobs after 220 garment factories were shut down.

  “Some of the more simplistic campaigners out there are saying, ‘don’t buy 10 T-shirts from Bangladesh, buy one from Italy.’ Please don’t do that,” Bolton said, adding that the garment industry had lifted millions out of poverty in Asia.

  Nestle SA, the world’s biggest maker of packaged foods with brands like KitKat, Perrier mineral water and Purina petfood, also used the stage to reiterate its commitment to eliminating forced labor and abuses in the supply chain.

  “Being a leader in our industry ... we do understand we can influence the supply chains we work with, and that’s what we do,” Nestle chief procurement officer Marco Goncalves said. “We recognize it is a difficult issue to deal with.”

  Over the past five years, Nestle has identified 30,000 instances of non-compliance from tier-one suppliers — from health and safety issues to working conditions — but Nestle has resolved the majority of those issues, Goncalves said.

  Less than 1 percent of Nestle’s suppliers have had to be eliminated from its supply chain due to non-compliance, he said.

  Since August, US law company Hagens Berman has filed two lawsuits against Nestle accusing it of importing fish-based pet food from a Thai supplier that used slave labor, and importing cocoa beans from suppliers that use child labor, including children trafficked to work on farms in Ivory Coast.

  Goncalves urged critics to go to cocoa farms to see the reality on the ground.

  “You realize when you go on the ground that the main issue is a lack of birth certificates,” he said. “If they [children] have no birth certificates, they cannot go to school.”

  The Britain-based anti-poverty campaign group Oxfam in March said that in the past year Nestle had updated its action plans to support women in cocoa supply chains and scored highly on workers’ rights.
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