John,
The mountain of academic support for mandatory, worker-driven, enforceable standards grew one research paper taller this month.
In early April, researchers at Yale, Stanford, and Sheffield University in the UK issued their first report in a much-anticipated series of research briefs into the failure of governments and corporations to root out forced labor and other human rights violations in global supply chains. Published under the collective title The Re:Structure Lab -- New Models for an Equitable Economy, the first release in the collaborative research project focuses on the shortcomings of one of the prevailing models of corporate accountability today – transparency legislation, by which governments require corporations to disclose their efforts to prevent forced labor in their suppliers' operations -- and "presents new ideas and examples of how business models and supply chains can be restructured to promote fair, equitable labour standards and worker rights."
The report pulls absolutely zero punches in its assessment of the impact of transparency legislation to date in the fight to end modern-day slavery:
“Transparency legislation, a dominant mode of regulation, is not working. Academic research has highlighted major weaknesses in the effectiveness of transparency legislation to influence corporate behaviour. Corporations can comply with transparency legislation without altering the commercial practices that lead to forced labour and exploitation. Strong sanctions for non-compliance are lacking, as are paths for remedy and redress for victims.
Briefly put, to date, transparency has sparked disclosure without actually changing things. Early efforts towards human rights due diligence to date have similarly focused on mapping with little action towards meaningful change."
The report goes on to address the current state of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) efforts more broadly, including the kind of corporate-led and for-profit certification and auditing schemes that have multiplied in part due to the demands of transparency laws, schemes that have served as the low-bar alternative to the Fair Food Program and other Worker-driven Social Responsibility (WSR) efforts for corporations like Wendy's, Kroger, Costco and others for more than a decade:
“Legislation has been paralleled by the proliferation of ineffective monitoring tools that are owned and commissioned by corporations and for-profit consultancies rather than being independent. Transparency legislation has expanded the role of certification standards and social auditing in supply chains that are opaque, inconsistent, and lack coherence. Not only are these ineffective tools to detect, address, and correct forced labour, but they can also mislead consumers and policymakers about working conditions in supply chains. Weak industry-led monitoring tools like social auditing enable corporations to create an illusion of combatting forced labour while simultaneously reinforcing business demand for it amongst suppliers and intermediaries.”
In short, the report concludes that being transparent about efforts to protect workers' fundamental human rights in your supply chain may be a necessary step, but it is hardly sufficient. Furthermore, shallow auditing and consumer-facing certifications not only don't work, they actually make it harder to see and solve the problems that transparency might reveal.
At the core of the policy brief, the researchers recommend that companies go beyond transparency and actually look at the results of their efforts: “Reporting on the measures being taken – such as social auditing or ethical certification – is insufficient. Businesses should shift towards reporting on the effectiveness of the measures they are undertaking to detect, prevent, and address forced labour.”
