An interesting and informative opinion piece provided by Dr David Batstone, co-founder and president of Not For Sale, and professor at the School of Management at the University of San Francisco, detailing how the very real forms of bondage contradicts our “sense of modern history and moral progress”. He examines the issue of slavery after having learnt that slavery very well reaches across the globe to one’s “own backyard”.
Dr Batstone writes this after having established his own agency, Not For Sale, where they undertook the task of creating a consumer tool, Free2Work, that “provides data and transparency to the supply chains of products that sit on the shelves of retain stores we frequent”.
Free2Work assigns a product a grade- A to F- based on the tangible steps that a company has taken to demonstrate that it has zero tolerance to forced labour in its supply chain. The 50 factors that go into evaluating the grade encompass protocols that pertain to transparency in a supply chain, a sold code of conduct, monitoring its implementation, and remediation when violations do occur.
Such technology, available as an app on the Android and iPhone, may allow one to finally learn the story behind the product. Simply said, walk into a store and scan the price tag.
If you would like to learn more about Not For Sale visit their website here.
-ABOT
(via aljazeera)
