Fat profits on the one hand, starvation wages on the other: The inequalities along the supply chains for our food are enormous. Dieter Schwarz, owner of Lidl and Kaufland, earns the annual income of a farmworker on a pineapple plantation in Costa Rica every six seconds. While German supermarkets earned record profits during the pandemic, farmworkers on the plantations supplying produce for the supermarket shelves had to work for wages that barely suffice to feed a family.
Especially precarious is the situation facing migrant workers in agriculture. Without them, the supply chains for numerous foodstuffs would collapse. For a number of products, migrant workers represent half the workforce or more. Many of them leave their homeland to earn a living as seasonal workers. In return, they often must accept exploitative working conditions. For many migrants, these conditions nevertheless amount to the best of several bad options, given the difficult circumstances in their homelands.
In June 2018, a coalition of global tech companies, civil society organizations, and international institutions jointly launched Tech Against Trafficking (TAT), a cooperative effort to support the eradication of human trafficking and in which the Glo...Read More
The report provides insight into how current research on purchasing practices and factory-level noncompliance can inform supply chain due diligence. Buyer purchasing practices most strongly impact working time, contracts, HR and compensation, with s...Read More
The risk of forced labour in global supply chains remains one of the most significant human rights issues for companies – and their investors – worldwide. At least 25 million people are currently estimated to be victims of forced labour, coerced...Read More
Internet and communication technology (ICT) has led to the emergence and rapid expansion of technology-facilitated trafficking in human beings (THB). The misuse of technology has become central to the business model of human traffickers and is prese...Read More
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