Why does modern slavery still exist?: Supply chain reform

The audit I ran

I used to run supply chain audits for a major retailer. I walked through processing plants in Thailand, garment factories in Bangladesh, agricultural operations in Central America. I carried a clipboard. I checked payroll records, facility conditions, documentation. I wrote reports that said no indicators of forced labor detected.

I was looking in the wrong places. A worker being coerced will not disclose coercion to an auditor who arrived with the plant manager. She will disclose it to another worker who was in the same situation, who speaks her language, and who is not wearing a lanyard.

I left auditing. I work on the EU directive implementation now. The directive creates something we have never had: civil liability for companies that fail to prevent forced labor in their supply chains. Not criminal prosecution of the trafficker at the bottom. Financial consequences for the company at the top. If the liability changes the math — if slavery becomes more expensive than paying a living wage — the chain starts to self-correct.

The law enforcement camp has been chasing the bottom of the chain for decades. Prosecution rates remain at 0.03 percent. The economic root causes camp wants to remove poverty from the equation. Twenty years per region. The survivor-led movement wants to be in the room. So do we — and we want the auditing protocols designed with people who have been inside the system, not by consulting firms that have never set foot in a processing plant.

The UK Modern Slavery Act requires reporting. Penalties for lying are minimal. Penalties for not filing are nothing. The EU directive has teeth. Whether the teeth are sharp enough is what the next five years will answer.

Where we concede ground: Corporate compliance creates paperwork sophisticated operations learn to game. We may catch the lazy traffickers and miss the good ones.

What would change our mind: Five years of EU enforcement showing no measurable reduction in forced labor despite full corporate compliance with the directive.

Read the full synthesis: Why does modern slavery still exist?