Approaches to Reducing the Use of Forced or Child Labor Summary of a Workshop on Assessing Practice (2009) / Chapter Skim
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4 ILLUSTRATIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES
4 ILLUSTRATIVE BUSINESS PRACTICES
Pages 31-54
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From page 31... ...
notes the obvious ethical or moral considerations and argues that businesses have a responsibility to mitigate child or forced labor. Where a company becomes engaged in the issue of child labour, its priority should be to work towards the complete and unconditional elimination of the WFCL [worst forms of child labor]
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From page 32... ...
Morgan began his presentation by offering background on child labor issues in West African cocoa production. He noted that the industry began to be pressed on this issue in September of 2000 and more so in the spring of 2001 when there were public reports of children in very dire straights in the cocoa sector.
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From page 33... ...
Morgan's perspective was that such action would have been damaging to both the industry and the cocoa farms. Industry signed on to the Harkin-Engel Protocol.5 Since that time, the cocoa industry has been pursuing a consolidated effort to address child and adult labor issues in the cocoa sectors of Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire.
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From page 34... ...
noted that the cocoa industry certification program is a complex model that industry was trying to implement across the cocoa- producing sectors of two countries: Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. The program comprises data collection, public reporting, remediation and response, and an independent third- party verification.
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From page 35... ...
He detailed two major programs that the World Cocoa Foundation has in West Africa: (1) the Sustainable Tree Crops Program that covers five West African countries (Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Liberia)
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From page 36... ...
It is focused on the cocoa sector and in particular on the worst forms of child labor and forced labor. The most important aspect of it is the role of community engagement.
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From page 37... ...
Ms. Roggensack noted that while companies involved in cocoa production tended to have codes of conduct that included some focus on child or forced labor, there were barriers to transmitting the codes all the way down the supply chain.
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From page 38... ...
The program is sensitive to legal and labor issues as well as the social responsibility expectations of its customers. Global Compliance covers more than child labor or forced labor though those were two of the initial problems.
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From page 39... ...
Levi Strauss is the world's largest brand-name apparel maker with sales in more than 110 countries around the world.10 Combining direct factories with its licensed factories, there are about 800 factories in 50 countries. Levi Strauss was the first multinational company to start a code of conduct, in 1991.11 The code was actually motivated internally by the company's employees.
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From page 40... ...
We support the development of legitimate workplace apprenticeship programs for the educational benefit of younger people. Prison Labor/Forced Labor We will not utilize prison or forced labor in contracting relationships in the manufacture and finishing of our products.
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From page 41... ...
Levi Strauss was already sourcing from Bangladesh when the code was put in place and was just rolling it out to its supply chain. When Levi's first started to implement its policies, the company found two facilities in Bangladesh that had workers under the minimum age, which is a clear violation of Levi Strauss's terms of engagement.
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From page 42... ...
• For hazardous work, the minimum age is 18 years of age And considering forced labor: • Employment is freely chosen: no forced or compulsory labor, including bonded or trafficked labour.15 Ms. Walker said that "child labor in the first tier of our supply chain is not endemic.
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From page 43... ...
The FLA Code of Conduct states in part: "Forced Labor. There shall not be any use of forced labor, whether in the form of prison labor, indentured labor, bonded labor or otherwise.
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From page 44... ...
Winrock International Vicki Walker, program officer for Empowerment and Civic Engagement, presented the work of Winrock, a global agricultural, natural resource organization. Winrock works in such areas as empowerment and civic engagement, trafficking 19 Recently, Syngenta along with Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer CropScience, BASF, and Dow AgroSciences have put forth a plan to eliminate child labor in contracted seed growing operations and other supply chain activities around the world.
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From page 45... ...
The CLASSE program is a program that reflects the first criterion and focuses in part on the notion of where children came from to end up in child labor. The ECHOES program focuses on relevant education and remediation.
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From page 46... ...
Again, the program provides educational alternatives to children. The program focuses on children in rural areas where there were small farmholders.
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From page 47... ...
International Labor Organization Benjamin Smith from the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC) at the ILO spoke about the importance of engaging multilateral stakeholders and ILO initiatives.24 He focused on two cases: the Banana and Flower Social Forums in Ecuador and Soccer Ball Production in Pakistan.25 24 "The ILO's International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC)
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From page 48... ...
The Social Forum for the Banana Production Sector was established by the banana industry in 2003, in response to a Human Rights Watch report on child labor in Ecuador's banana plantations.26 The report resulted in international pressure for banana certification.27 In May 2004 the Banana Sector Plan for the elimination of child labor was launched, a key accomplishment of the banana forum. An ILO report in 2000 noted that child labor was also a problem in the flower industry.28 The Flower Social Forum is "an interagency working group made up of government agencies, industry associations, trade unions, nonprofit organizations, and international groups such as the ILO and UNICEF."29 In January 2009, the Flower Social Forum was expanded to include other fundamental principles and rights at work.
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From page 49... ...
Mr. Smith then discussed the case of soccer ball production in Pakistan.30 The trigger for action, he noted, was media exposure of child labor in major sporting goods companies' supply chains, which occurred in the mid-1990s.31 A result of this attention was that in 1997, the Atlanta Agreement was signed with the World Federation of Sporting Goods, ILO, UNICEF, and the Sialkot Chamber of Commerce and Industry.32 With U.S.
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From page 50... ...
Ms. Aurelie Hauchere from the ILO's Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labor -- a technical cooperation program that provides assistance to the ILO's constituents -- then spoke about the ILO's work on forced labor.
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From page 51... ...
This situation changed that year, as the government officially recognized the problem at the United Nations. The first step was the creation of a Special Mobile Inspection Group, which is a labor inspection team consisting not only of labor inspectors but also labor prosecutors and federal police officers that go to investigate complaints on the estates to see whether there is forced labor.
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From page 52... ...
Even for the members of the team they know the destination only a couple of days in advance. The second step taken by the government was the creation in 2004 of the lista suja or the "dirty list," a register of names of individuals or company employers who have been caught using forced labor during a labor inspection.37 The list was established by the Ministry of Labor and Employment (MTE)
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From page 53... ...
The declaration stated that they will eradicate forced labor in their supply chains.
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