Ed Potter, former Director of Global Workplace Rights at The Coca-Cola Company, NO.
As discussed below, companies are already regulated by national laws prohibiting forced labour. The problem has been the lack of effective enforcement of these laws. Additional forced labour legislation directed at companies will have the same enforcement gaps. As set out in the 2011 UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, the corporate duty to respect human rights is secondary to the primary duty of the nation state to protect its citizens from human rights harm and supplements the primary state duty. Since 2011, companies have been urgently working to address their human rights impacts without the need for additional binding regulation or disclosure requirements.
Global or cross-border supply chains are nothing new. They have existed for centuries from the inception of international commerce. What is new, however, is that because of the internet and social media, we, as a consuming public, are more aware of them and have a somewhat better picture of the working conditions in them.
