New shopping app shows slavery in company supply chains

Want to know what’s behind the toy, MP3 player, chocolate or sweater you buy? The International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) and the Not for Sale Campaign (NFSC) continue to develop their partnership on a unique online resource for consumers concerned about forced labor and child labor in their favorite products, Free2Work.org. Free2Work is a website were consumers can easily search specific products, learn more about various labor standards and corporate practices, and further their engagement through their consumption decisions.

Free2Work is the only resource for consumers with a particular concern for forced and child labor. So far, the website has evaluated and rated a broad range of the top products in the US market from garments to electronics to children’s toys and food using a comprehensive rating tool. Some of the companies that have already been rated include: Apple, Adidas, Gap, Hanes, Hasbro, HP, Levi’s, Nestle, Nike, Puma, Skechers, Timberland and Wal-Mart. As part of the project, many of the companies rated are also working to improve their ratings by strengthening their policies to eliminate labor rights abuses. The website also has numerous features where users can share information and resources, find ways to take action and offer feedback on the project.

A Free2Work iPhone and Android APP are now available to download. The app makes it easy to see supply chain ratings on over 100 companies with many more companies to be added to the list. The app was also featured as one of the “11 Great Apps for 2011” at the San Francisco Appshow.

ILRF and NFSC look forward to continuing to expand their collaboration throughout 2011 to support the growing movement to stop forced and child labor.

You can DOWNLOAD THE APP HERE and take it for a test drive yourself.

Source: Not For Sale

Understanding Modern Slavery in the Supply Chain & Why Blanket Boycotts May Not be Best

Understanding where our products come from is an important part of understanding one of the underlying factors in modern slavery today. From cotton to cocoa, rugs to cell phones, almost every supply chain has some amount of slavery in it.

This is one of the hardest parts of slavery to weed out. To combat slavery in the supply chain, abolitionist organizations must work with companies and suppliers to help them find cases of slavery and remove it from their supply chain. This is how long term solutions can be accomplished as has been seen with the Cocoa Initiative, discussed by Kevin Bales, President of Free the Slaves.

It's often difficult for businesses to wipe out slavery from their supply chains. Take for instance cocoa farms along the ivory coast. Chocolate companies typically buy their cocoa from a broker, who buys it from a broker, who buys it from a group of farmers, where a smaller percentage of these farmers may use slaves.

Some might say, "Let's boycott their chocolate." The problem with this blanket approach is that it may do more harm than good. This hurts the cocoa business, which hurts the brokers, which hurts the group of farmers, of which a large percentage are legitimate farmers on the Ivory Coast struggling to survive. If their farms fail because their sales have dropped, they can easily be enslaved on slave farms or may become a slave farm themselves to produce better margins and just survive.

Because the overhead is so cheap for slave labor, this can grow the slave cycle instead of breaking it.

That's why it's critical to weed out the small percentage of slavery in the product chain at the root. When businesses and anti-slavery groups work together, I mean really team up, this can take place. The organizations can help identify and root out slavery in the supply chain and the companies can expend the resources to make sure local authorities are notified and that it gets removed from their purchases by brokers.

If you know of a company with slavery in their product chain, contact the company to make them aware of the problem along with your state legislators and local news. Nothing will get a company motivated to investigate and cleanup their product chain like a little bad PR. This is actually how the chocolate companies started making changes and decided to partner up with government and abolitionist groups. Boycotts can and do have this effect as well. You just have to remember their may be greater consequences to a blanket boycott than you might realize.

With that said, The International Labour Rights Forum and Not For Sale has created a Free 2 Work APP for the Android and iPhone, which rates companies on their supply chain and makes it easy to learn more about companies and share information with friends. Here's a quick video about it. DOWNLOAD THE APP HERE.

Source: Not For Sale