Ensuring people have free choice over work.
The ILO estimates that more than 20 million people globally are forced to work against their will. This issue has received heightened attention over the past several years due to the innovative and diligent work of NGOs, governments, multilateral organizations, media and companies.
Our COVC and Vendor Compliance Agreements explicitly prohibit the use of forced labor in any stage of our products’ production, and we actively work to combat this violation of fundamental human rights.
While assessing facilities, our field teams interview both workers and managers and review records to help ensure that workers:
We believe legislation is an important lever in the global fight against human trafficking; we welcomed the 2012 California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, which requires companies of a certain size to publicly communicate their efforts to identify and eliminate forced labor in their supply chains. We combine this disclosure with our response to the UK Modern Slavery Act of 2015, which also requires eligible businesses over a certain size to disclose annually the actions they have taken to ensure there is no modern slavery in their business or supply chains. (Our response to that statement can be found here.