Within the UK, the vulnerability of migrant workers to exploitation will become more acute in the coming months and years. First of all, those fleeing the war in Ukraine are at risk of being trafficked for purposes of exploitation. This situation is exacerbated by the UK government’s intransigence about waiving visa conditions, choosing instead to implement a scheme that contains more risks of exploitation for Ukrainians. In addition, the UK’s National Boundaries Bill, if passed in its current form, would present new challenges for identifying and supporting victims of modern slavery. These developments further complicate conditions that already lead to about ten thousand referrals per year to the National Referral Mechanism for potential victims of modern slavery, the most brutal form of exploitation. These are only the reported cases.
Calls for companies to take responsibility for their supply chains to ensure they do not use exploited workers, indirectly or otherwise, will not come as a surprise. Since the Modern Slavery Act (MSA) passed in 2015, any business earning £36m or more has been required to publish an annual statement detailing the steps it is taking to address the risks of modern slavery.
My research into how the construction industry – one of the UK’s most risky sectors for modern slavery – addresses the risks of exploitation in its supply chains sheds light on recent progress.
One encouraging finding is that practitioners in the industry understand modern slavery to include lesser forms of exploitation, which means there is awareness that it is not just the most severe cases that need to be identified or addressed. As the Director of Purchasing and Supply Chain said:
“[modern slavery is] About people in this country and how they are operated and controlled, or whether they have to pay for their own personal protective equipment, or pay for their commute to work, or not actually pay minimum wage.”
In addition, many of those who work for large contractors know that the risks are exacerbated, if not created, by the opaque and complex labor supply networks that result from the extensive use of subcontracting:
“If you’re looking at modern slavery and the moral path and the exploitation of labor, it’s not difficult because the vision when you get down to the second level, the third level, and then the real small business, that vision becomes more complex and more muddy and muddied“.
An understanding of the people most vulnerable to exploitation was also shown: “I think it is the workers abroad without their knowledge of England, and far from their roots, who are certainly most at risk.”.
The problem is that this knowledge has not led to robust and effective mitigation measures. Instead, there is a heavy reliance on paperwork-based procedures that chain expectations and terms through a labor supply network; training to “spot the signs” of slavery; document verification, albeit in response to immigration legislation rather than the Ministry of Social Affairs; And in very rare cases, audits.
These measures alone or in combination are not sufficient to address the dangers of modern slavery. A manager within a material supplier summarized how it had largely led to a shallow compliance practice:
“A lot has been said about the ripple effect of big contractors telling smaller contractors they have to do something or not do something. I think the way most of that has been implemented is, in fact, it’s turned into a checkbox of, ‘Did you do this?’” Yes, “Did you put up a sticker?” Yes, “Do you think slavery is horrible?” Yes, tick, next. What’s your lowest price?.
In other words, the approach to addressing modern slavery within the sector is to implement superficial changes, which do not challenge the complexity or opacity of labor supply chains, and thus do little to improve their transparency.
Here, there is a contradiction between knowing the risks and the measures put in place to address them. There are two main reasons for this. First, the principal contractors believe that exceeding minimum expectations in terms of the amelioration of modern slavery carries no corresponding reward or benefit for the company. The group purchasing manager made this point:
“From an absolute competitive point of view, it somewhat gives you a disadvantage because you will probably have to incur more costs … The more risk averse you are, the greater the cost you may incur compared to a less risk-averse organization. “
As such, companies implement the measures they think they need to put in place in order to bid for work from clients, but they rarely go beyond this point.
The second reason is the behavior of clients, who award work based on competitive bidding at the lowest price and are not willing to offer contractors additional financing to meet the dangers of modern slavery. As the Director of Corporate Responsibility explained, this behavior is not limited to the private sector: “You’d just be surprised at the driving approach from the government if I’m being totally honest, it’s about the priceThis led to derision of how companies respond to clients’ questions about their mitigation strategies. The compliance manager explained how they fit the wording in their responses to the pre-qualification documents clients use to select firms to do work:
“I suppose sometimes, you know, we’re a little ambitious in what we say we do in our responses that are really well worded, and then we put a price tag that makes us competitive.. “
This is then filtered through the supply chain, with each component pressed for profit.
Both points make it clear that industry’s lackluster attempts to tackle modern slavery are not simply the result of indifference or unwillingness to take more fundamental measures. In fact, many industry practitioners have said they would like the industry to step up efforts. But competitive dynamics and clients’ often stubborn attitude to budgets have constrained the parameters of what is considered feasible. This has led to some frustrating and nuanced statements that the market-led approach to modern slavery has failed. As one manager said,We tried the voluntary approach, we’re into the voluntary approach and it didn’t workHe suggested instead that change would only come when corporations were legally compelled to act by the state.
There is certainly recent evidence of state interest in modern slavery. For example, advance the aforementioned National Boundaries Bill, which was widely condemned by anti-slavery organizations. She recently made an unsuccessful attempt to overturn a High Court ruling that gave victims of trafficking permission to remain in the UK. As described above, they also supply at the lowest price as a customer in the construction industry, which means they produce modern slavery legislation with one hand and contribute practices that incentivize minimal mitigation efforts on the other.
Obviously, expecting the state to advance the agenda of modern slavery in favor of exploited workers, especially those who are undocumented, is, to put it mildly, not a great strategy. The construction industry, as with other sectors, simply cannot wait to be forced to improve its efforts through legislation. At a time when the risks for the most vulnerable in society are increasing, companies are therefore faced with two choices. They either improve their mitigation strategies to ensure they are more appropriate to the nature of the risk, whatever the challenge that may be, or they choose to take no action. Choose what companies He should Doing it is obvious, but whether they will take that route is another matter.
Chris Besterfield is a PhD student in Management at the University of Bristol. This contribution is based on his research on the construction industry’s response to modern slavery law.
Image credit: wal_172619
