What has slavery got to do with business?

Does slavery still exist and if so what does modern slavery have to do with business? Read what brought this issue to Konica Minolta’s attention and why this global social issue is a ‘ticking time bomb’ in the board rooms of corporate Australia.

Researching Modern Slavery

Following a work conference in Cambodia in which our key note speaker, a Cambodian woman named Somaly Mam spoke to us about the prevalence of young women being trafficked into a life of sexual slavery we felt compelled to assist her organisation AFESIP with their work. WE then broadened our scope to investigate human rights abuses in corporate supply chains and were lead to the Walk Free Foundation in Perth, established by Andrew, Nicola and Grace Forrest. WE were then introduced to research undertaken by the Gallup organisation, that many of you may know as a political polling company, but they are also a social research firm. The Gallup research, published as The Global Slavery Index, indicated that there were over 40 million people today in the world in some form of forced labour, or what has been called modern slavery. Many of them in corporate supply chains.

Now to put that in context 40 million means that there are more slaves in the world today than at any point in human history.  lt means there are more slaves in the world today than the entire number that were transported out of Africa on slave ships in the 400 years before the abolish of slavery by the British Parliament in the 1850s. So, the situation is not getting better, it is getting worse.

I knew we did not have forced labour in our own business, and I do not for one second think that you have forced labour in your own organisation. lt would not be tolerated. The problem however, is a very complex one that goes well beyond our own direct operations. We all have tier 1, suppliers that we buy things from and they in turn have their tier 1, tier 2, tier 3 etc suppliers that they in turn buy components from in the manufacturing of their products.

Can you just imagine how many different companies have made small components that ended up going into an iPhone or a laptop. Many, many different suppliers across multiple countries. And that is where the problem comes in. Those smaller companies, often with less stringent governance, and often using third-party labour hire companies for their labour force. This situation exists in almost all industries with electronics, apparel, mining and agriculture being regarded as particularly problematic.

Thai Fishing Story

Interestingly slavery crossed our path while we were at a conference, this time in Thailand.

One evening we were on a clipper ship, an old four mastered sailing ship, and following a dinner there was a talk about Thai culture with an opportunity to ask questions of the cruise director.

Somebody commented that it was pitch black out on the ocean, except for all the lights that we could see dotted around on the ocean, and asked what they were. The cruise director said that the lights were on Thai fishing boats and were used to attract the fish at night. She said it's interesting you should ask, as just recently they had jumped in a little dinghy and gone over to one of the ships during the day and asked if they could come on board and ask them about what sort of seafood they were catching and so on to help inform their talks.

The captain of the fishing boat said, “yes of course” and the cruise director stepped on board and the first thing she saw was a man sitting on the deck with a collar around his neck which was chained to the deck of the boat.

With considerable alarm she said “who's that” and the captain replied “oh that's a slave” and she said “but you can't have a slave” and with the sweep of his arm, indicating all the other boats on the ocean, he said “most of us have slaves” and she said “but why is he chained up” and the captain said “oh it's because this one's a troublemaker, but not for much longer it'll be fish food soon”. He then said, “if you're so concerned you can buy it from me if you want to” and they negotiated a price which was $US700 dollars, she went back to the ship spoke to the captain, returned with the money, and they bought this human being in order to free them.

It turned out he was from Myanmar and he had responded to a recruiter who'd gone through the villages there offering good jobs in Thailand. He thought that he could go there for two years and earn enough money to buy a house, educate his children and completely change his family's life, but of course he was deceived and ended up as a slave on this vessel. Regrettably, it is a very common story, and this seafood ends up in the products of global food produces for human consumption, and as pet food, and finds its way into our supermarkets and restaurants. There is a movie on the SBS On Demand platform in Australia called Buoyancy which tells the story of a young Cambodian boy trapped in this same situation.

There is an expression in the human rights world which you may have heard of which is “once you know you can't unknow and once you’ve seen you can't unsee” and so really these incidences of slavery that we'd encountered ourselves fueled our desire to try and do something and certainly try and ensure that there was no form of slavery or forced labour in our own operation, as regards any of the goods or services that we procured for our business.  

Ethical Sourcing Initiatives

So, what did we do? Well, we developed a suite of documents and policies such as our Human Rights Statement, an Ethical Sourcing Roadmap and a Supplier Code of Conduct and started to act initially by gathering our suppliers together and talking with them. This work was headed up by Laura McManus our Ethical Sourcing Manager, now Human Rights Manager at Woolworths Group.

We did not make anything in Australia but we bought a lot of manufactured goods. For example, cotton-polo T-shirts with the Konica Minolta logo on them. We had never really thought about where these things came from. Who grew the cotton, who made the T- shirts? How were the people treated? How many different companies were ultimately involved in the manufacture of all the other things we bought such as office furniture, office supplies, technology etc? So, we started to ask these questions.

 T Shirt Story

One interesting occurrence was when our marketing department were about to purchase 300 t shirts for a forthcoming conference and the t shirts were going to be branded with Konica Minolta and the theme of the conference and so they thought they would of course follow through on my request that we start to look into where the things that we were buying were made.

 So, somebody came to me and said that they had started to investigate the situation and that they had some good news and some bad news. And the good news was that the company that we bought the t shirt from had gone to their supplier and asked questions about where the products were made. They got a fairly lukewarm response, as the order wasn't big enough to warrant that importer doing any research into the manufacture of the product. Nevertheless, the company we dealt with had gone on and found another supplier who actually was able to verify that their goods were ethically produced going right back to where the cotton was grown. But the bad news was that that it would cost more for those particular products.

So, I said to the person who was having this discussion with me “just so I'm clear, your question to me is should we continue to buy the cheap product that may well be made by people in some form of forced labour or should we buy the more expensive product that has not involved the exploitation of the workers involved in the production? Is that your question?” Of course I could hardly blame the person for checking with me, however, of course bought the ethically sourced product. Things were starting to change from the way that we'd previously done our business.  

Taking a leadership position

We thought we were probably playing catch up with our ethical sourcing program, but it seemed that it may have been more a case of being the exception rather than the rule and our actions started to catch the attention of people outside the company. In 2017 Anti-slavery Australia awarded us their Freedom Award, which was the first time a corporate had received this award. We were also the recipient of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Business award in 2018. In 2018 I was invited to speak at the Un in Geneva on our work and again in 2019 at the UN in New York.

We now also have legislation, The Australian Modern Slavery Act that came into force in 2019 that compels all companies with revenue of $100 million or more to submit an annual Modern Slavery Statement.