Introduction

This chapter, having briefly restated what is meant by the term ‘modern slavery’, will explore how business is implicated by it, and the salient requirements of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) transparency in supply chain provision, in the context of growing mandatory reporting requirements for business to report transparently on their supply chain impacts. We also examine how business has responded to the MSA. It concludes with some practical steps that business can take to address the risk of modern slavery in its supply chains.

The liberalisation of trade, the growth in global value chains (GVCs) and the proliferation of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their impact on the environment and human rights have recently led to a spotlight being shone on ethical trade and the protection of human rights. ‘Modern slavery’ has become a recognised global phenomenon, giving rise to questions on how the state and business should be tackling these issues.

Although ethical trade is still relatively in its infancy, corporate social responsibility (CSR) professionals, pressure groups, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and international bodies such as the International Labour Organisation (ILO) have spent years trying to manage the impacts of large-scale global business. While it may seem relatively straightforward to ensure certain factors such as decent work, decent wages and regular employment contracts throughout the supply chain, this has increasingly become no easy feat. Global business has expanded tenfold and MNCs are faced with assessing the benefits of supporting developing economies through supply contracts and ensuring that they are producing a responsibly sourced product. As business has expanded, so have the mechanisms to conceal forced labour. The GVC theoretical framework has been deployed over the last two decades to analyse the drivers of labour exploitation in the global economy and the governance gaps that facilitate it. Larger organisations have increasingly complex and ever-changing supply chains, making it almost impossible to stay on top of risk. Another significant contribution to the exploitation by business of labour has been the significant growth by MNCs in outsourcing the number of workers employed directly. This outsourcing of the functions and responsibilities associated with employment increases the opportunity to exploit labour as it significantly dismantles employers’ obligations to workers. (Phillips 2016).