Panel Event: Modern Slavery in the Corporate World

The event- ‘Modern Slavery in the Corporate World’- hosted five panellists to talk about the different manifestations of the issue and the ways in which governments are, and aren’t- combating it.

The speakers came from a diverse range of backgrounds. First to speak was Laura Spoter, solicitor with the Environment and Operational Risk team at Travers Smith. After briefly explaining what the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) is, and what it means from large corporations, Laura described how her role as an advisor to corporations operates. She stated that the MSA requires a company earning over a profit of 3 million to, by law, produce a statement on their website that shows that they will eradicate slavery, or that they have no part in it at all. Laura also pointed out that companies have the option to state that they are not willing to eradicate the problem, but as they issue is one of the fundamental points of worry for a business’ reputation, they were mostly willing and receptive to the act.

The MSA, developed from Californian legislation, applies to all types of corporations, including service industries such as hedge-funds, law firms and financial industries. Both Laura and Samantha Goethals, a senior researcher on Labour Rights at the Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, presented some of the shortcomings of the MSA. Laura showed that because of the expansion of the MSA into the service industry, companies were finder it harder to clearly define their supply chain, leadings to an escalation in the use of exploitative labour. Furthermore, although companies need to set out their aims and intentions for the abolition of modern slavery clearly, there is often only a handful or less corporate responsibility personnel working on these statements, meaning they are less truthful and formidable than they should be.

Different critiques of the MSA were central to the panellist’s discussion about how the UK can enforce a more comprehensive and powerful law to end modern slavery in large companies. Samantha argued that more monitoring and incentives are needed to make the statements that companies advertise more transparent. Senior lecturer at UCL’s Faculty of Law, Barnali Choudhury, used Switzerland and France as examples the UK could consider. Both countries have proposed bills that enact a multi-national order of “Due Diligence”; a broader judicial vehicle for legislating against slavery and its supply chain.

Of course, all of these proposed changes to the future landscape of corporation’s “Due Diligence” is at odds with their main aim: to maximise shareholder profit. Rose Ireland, a member of Access to Justice, succinctly pointed out how the MSA may seem to coincide with the reputational interests of a company, but it’s also against the ‘ethos’ of their business. Furthermore, Rose made it clear that if any progression is to be made to eradicate slavery, corporations need to stop conflating Corporate Social Responsibility and human rights. The former may be well intentioned, but essentially it only addresses the corporation’s ‘bottom line’. Human rights, on the other hand, is concerned with universal entitlements. For Rose, the best way forward is to “make modern slavery unprofitable”, subverting and changing the power structures to rearrange the orders of financial gain.

Last to speak was Peter Frankental, Amnesty International’s Economics Relations Director. Using Amnesty’s extensive research in palm oil dispensaries across Indonesia, Peter showed the ways in which organisations like Amnesty can display and tackle the endemic problem of forced labour, enabled by large corporations. By frequently contacting the big companies at the heart of Indonesian labour exploitations, Peter told us the common excuses companies use to erase and negate the issue. He said that the complexities within the issue of modern day slavery should not allow companies to escape the problem.