The Responsible Supply Chain Show is a must-hear podcast for insights and strategies on building ethics and sustainability into global supply chains. Each episode delves into the challenges and opportunities businesses face as they strive to create more responsible, transparent, and environmentally friendly supply chains. From innovative sourcing and trade disruptions to reducing carbon footprints and combating modern slavery, we explore the critical issues that define the future of global commerce.
Welcome to the Responsible Supply Chain Show, where we explore the world of responsible sourcing, sustainable practices, and ethical supply chains. I'm your host, Justin Dillon. And in each episode, we'll dive into real stories, challenges, and solutions that companies are facing today as they strive to build more transparent, ethical, and sustainable supply chains. Let's get in. Okay.
Justin Dillon:Welcome to episode 3 of the Responsible Supply Chain Show. If 2 of you were listening to the first one and you brought 2 friends and you brought 2 friends, we we just we might have a basketball team by now, and I'm I'm here for it. I am ready to take on the world with all all 5 or 6 of us. I am really enjoying putting this show together. It feels honestly, you know, very natural talking about things that I'm passionate about.
Justin Dillon:I love meeting people. I well, the truth is I love meeting really smart people. I just feel like they make me better. Hopefully, they make you better as well. Today, we're doing a show on modern slavery and supply chains.
Justin Dillon:This is a topic that I have been, working on for a a long time. Ben Skinner, who is joining us today, is one of those people who is just an absolute, maven in this space. But what what's going on in this space at large when it comes to responsible supply chains and specifically modern slavery and supply chains? Well, I'll tell you what's going on in the news. All we hear about right now is, in the news is cabinet picks and who's going to be running our government our government.
Justin Dillon:And, it looks like senator Rubio, is going to be is very likely gonna be our secretary of state. As a country, we've been fortunate to have a number of secretary of states that are pretty passionate, pretty focused on ending modern slavery. It is a purple issue in the United States. I believe it's a purplish issue. We call it purple here, meaning both sides.
Justin Dillon:Both sides are against it, and senator Rubio was the lead senate sponsor behind the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, which, is essentially a import ban on goods suspected to be made with forced labor, specifically coming, in this case, out of western China. $3,660,000,000 worth of shipments have been detained as of November 1, 2024. That's a lot of shipments. The reason I'm bringing him up is that that number is likely going to increase dramatically. Now while secretary of state is not directly in control of shipments, he does, they do the the state department and Department of Health and Human Services, who is running this show, is, that they have lots of task forces that work together on forced labor.
Justin Dillon:And, Rubio is definitely going to be, a a a force on this. He is in fact, he has called for restrictions, of a trade provision known as the de minimis exemption, which allows low value shipments of packages to enter the country with minimal scrutiny or no tariffs. This has allowed for, a a lot of goods to come into the United States that, are suspected, and I'm gonna go ahead and say, are definitely being, produced with forced labor. This is a loophole that Rubio wants to plug along with other things. So what does that mean here in the United States?
Justin Dillon:Supply chains are gonna need to get a lot more transparent, a lot more responsible, if you wanna do business in the United States. Blocking shipments of goods made with forced laborers politically checks 2 holes 2 boxes. It checks the human rights box, we're the good we're the good guys stopping slavery from happening in the world, and it also touches a an American first agenda box. And so if you understand trade provisions and, customs and border protection, you know, seizures of goods and all the rest of it, understand what's going on behind all of this. Yes.
Justin Dillon:Absolutely, it's following the law, and, absolutely, it is politics. And so if you are an importer in the United States, you might want to start paying attention to where your supply chain leads. By the way, that doesn't just end here in the United States. The the EU has been finally finalizing some of their own laws. They have their own ban, that is not primarily focused on Western China, but anywhere in the world, where goods might be produced with forced or child labor.
Justin Dillon:Those goods are going to start to be detained as well coming into the EU in the next couple years. So what that means is companies, regardless of where you do business, you're gonna wanna start paying attention to where your supply chain, is touching in the world. I think that's a good thing. I think that if you wanna be responsible, you gotta pay attention, and that's something that we've certainly been paying attention to and and being involved with. Today, we're gonna talk to Ben Skinner about this very topic.
Justin Dillon:Ben is, he's he's one of those guys. He's like a he's like a mister wonderful. He he just for human rights. Like, the guy knows how to speak. The guy knows how to talk.
Justin Dillon:I've we've done several events together, and he's just he speaks from his heart, but he also has just this enormous brain and incredible talent to communicate everything that's inside of him, which makes him a great, great advocate. He is a senior fellow at the Shuster Institute for Investigative Journalists at Brandeis University. He also had a fellowship at the Carr Center for the Human Rights Policy of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. That's a big one. He also served as special assistant to ambassador Richard Holbrook and worked at a research and worked as a research he did a bunch of things.
Justin Dillon:I could keep going. He also wrote a great book called A Crime So Monstrous, that really was, like, this bellwether book years ago that really opened up the topic of forced labor in in supply chains. And now Ben runs, an organization called Transparentum, which he's gonna tell us about, that does investigative journalism kind of mixed with corporate social responsibility. He'll talk about that. So without further ado, I hope you enjoy this conversation with mister Benjamin Skinner.
Justin Dillon:Ben Skinner, so good to see you, my friend. Where are we finding you today?
Benjamin Skinner:Great to see you, Justin. Long time, Brooklyn, New York.
Justin Dillon:I can't think of a cooler place. Let's pretend that you and I never met. Perished the thought.
Benjamin Skinner:Mhmm.
Justin Dillon:And I know nothing about forced labor and supply chains.
Benjamin Skinner:Yeah.
Justin Dillon:Tell me what Transparentum does.
Benjamin Skinner:So Transparentum is is really a distillation, which I actually just heard summarized by, perhaps a mutual friend, but, anyway, somebody that I've known for a decade or so, Jon Batiste, who said, you have to confront the brutal reality while walking in unwavering faith. And those 2, very dissonant ideas, I think, are kind of encapsulated in what Transparentum does. The brutal reality part is the investigation. So we go in and do deep dive investigations into forced labor, child labor, and gross environmental lethal environmental degradation, overseas in corporate supply chains. And we go to suppliers, of of brands and retailers.
Benjamin Skinner:We go to their their suppliers to suppliers of suppliers of suppliers. We go all the way out, and we document at close quarter where those abuses are happening, forced labor, child labor, people, who are forced to work, held through fraud, under threat of violence. And then the the the walking in the unf unwavering faith part comes in where we approach the brands and the retailers first before we go to the general public, and we say, we're not gonna take your money. We are entirely philanthropically funded. But what we what we will give you is time to analyze, our our investigation, to to look at your supplier, to look up your supply chain, and to to really understand where these problems are are manifest and to and to change the story before it goes out into the general public, before we talk to your investors, before we talk to regulators that can seize the products coming into the United States, before we talk to the general public, to your customers via, via journalists.
Benjamin Skinner:And and what we found is that about 75 to 80 percent of the companies that we engage with seize the opportunity, do the right thing, and get workers out of death bondage. They change their their the operations of their supply chains.
Justin Dillon:So it sounds like you've got a carrot and stick, operation at play. Right? Like and and I don't think carrots work without sticks and sticks work without carrots. Generally, what's the response when you show a company something that they just had no idea was going on in their supply chain?
Benjamin Skinner:You know, it it runs the gamut. So take our first investigation, which is into leather tanneries in Bangladesh. There was a cluster of leather tanneries on the Boragonia River, just just on the, in a in what they call an upisal or a neighborhood of of Dhaka. And it was a residential neighborhood that had been overrun by over a 150 textbook, de facto jus jure illegal tanneries. Right?
Benjamin Skinner:These were these were, using chrome tanning. So chrome, cadmium, lead going into the drinking water of some 500,000 people downstream, the average life expectancy, for for I should say, if you are working in those tanneries, 90% of of those workers were dead by the age of 50, and a quarter of the workers, according to the World Health Organization, were were under the age of 11, in those in those tanneries. And, you know, I could go in at the beginning of this investigation as a westerner with an SLR camera and take photos of of 7 year olds cutting the, the edge off of raw hides with sharp razors with no protection. Right? And and what what was so striking was when we began approaching the very large, handbag, retailers, the very large handbag brands, the very the the very large, shoe retailers as well.
Benjamin Skinner:They had no idea that this was anywhere on their supply chain. We traced it through a supplier in Korea, and then to another manufacturer in Korea and then and then to these companies. And the first response was, well, we don't think this is in there. And then when they dug a little deeper, they said, oh, yeah. This is in our this is in our supply chain.
Benjamin Skinner:It's it's de minimis. It's not that much. But 2 to 3% of your of your supply chain is still a very significant impact on those 500,000 people living downstream. And so so the first response is kind of, geez, we didn't know, most of the time. And then you you get that once.
Benjamin Skinner:Right? You get that one kind of get out of jail free card. And then, the then you know. And and if and if you know about it and you don't do anything about it, that's willful disregard. But if you know something about it and you work to fix it, that's called responsibility.
Justin Dillon:We talk about I think you talk about in the book, the whole Stalin quote. We talk about it here often that, you know, the death of a million is a statistic. The death of 1 is a tragedy. Mhmm. You go into the tragedies.
Justin Dillon:You tell the stories of people in your book, and you connect those to our everyday lives. And in in one of those one of those stories you talk about, and I'd love you to walk through it here, just the just the the the time frame of, like, being able to leave New York. What is it? Like, 5 hours in 5 hours from New York, you you could be sitting with someone who's living in modern day slavery in Haiti. Can you kind of walk through that kind of, like, story, but also just proximity of how this is to our everyday lives?
Benjamin Skinner:Yeah. So I I I'll I'll walk through that briefly and then bring it to to to to the reality that it's even closer than this. I mean, you don't have to fly to Haiti, into the middle of, you know, what is teetering on the edge of being an out and out failed state, in order to to to find human degradation and the exploitation of human misery to to to the degree where people can be bought and sold. And, this was shortly after the 2004 coup. I I I flew to Haiti, and there was a place where I have been told if you pull up on, in a car, there will be people that will negotiate the sale of a of a child.
Benjamin Skinner:And officially, this is what the in Haiti, they call the rest of x system. It's for domestic servitude, essentially. And in theory, it's in exchange for some schooling. So poor rural families send their, send their children to slightly less poor urban families and who could give them some, in theory, shelter and food and education. In some cases, it's it almost looks like quasi adoption in the in the the vast majority of cases according to the to the studies that I was building off of.
Benjamin Skinner:It's it's exploitative. It's it essentially turns them into modern day slaves. But I I would say, you know, one thing I didn't do in the book, and and and I was inspired by you and others on this, was to really look at what was going on in in the stuff that we buy in the and and to really analyze the moral decision that all of us make when we hit confirm purchase. Because because it is it is so easy to take for granted that, oh, wow. It's, you know, the price is down 14% on Amazon.
Benjamin Skinner:I'm getting a great deal. Quite possibly. But remember that the cost that we pay is more than what appears on that line in your checkout, in your cart. And so as I moved on from the book and started reporting for Bloomberg Businessweek, I had a new mandate, and that was to look at supply chains. And I was I was hugely intimidated by that.
Benjamin Skinner:Right? Because, you know, I could go in for Time Magazine before that and talk to, as I did in South Africa, crack dealers who were rolling their profits into selling young girls. And there was some physical risk for me while I was in theater, you know, in that in that moment. But they weren't gonna sue me for defamation afterwards. These companies these companies, if you get it wrong, they're gonna sue you.
Benjamin Skinner:So we so we were very, very careful to to kind of have all of the all of the t's, crossed and all the i's dotted. If you give them the opportunity, as we do through Transparentum, to to to remedy the problems, they have immense power to do that. And and here's here's my point. Consumers have that power as well. Investors have that power as well.
Benjamin Skinner:So all of us have the ability to interrogate the the the true cost of the products that we're buying and to make sure that the brands and retailers that we buy from know that it matters to us.
Justin Dillon:I always I always say it's a great point. I always say compliance means I have to. Responsibility means I get to. And we we all want to be part of a bigger story, brands included, and no one wants to be tied to a story of exploitation. No one.
Justin Dillon:So I'm not surprised that when you bring these stories, and and they are stories, that companies want to dig into, you know, the mapping and the transparency and all the rest of it. And I will say, you know, that I I do remember you working on that story as in New Zealand. Right?
Benjamin Skinner:Yeah. The first the first one for Bloomberg.
Justin Dillon:The first one. Yeah. And it really cracked open. I think it was the first time I've ever heard of the term bill of lading, which literally I live in every day now. But it was the it was the I'm like, what is a bill of lading?
Justin Dillon:I have to Google that. And it was because of what you're saying. Right? You are connecting the commercial dots to a story that no one wants to be associated with. And those those connections, which we now call transparency or responsibility, supply chains, and all the rest of it.
Justin Dillon:How do we tell stories of parity? How do we see commonality and connection? How can we do better as practitioners to tell stories of parity?
Benjamin Skinner:You know, I I I am constantly learning year by year on this. And I I you know, if you'd asked me 25 years ago when I started writing about modern day slavery, if I'd still be reporting on it a quarter century later, I would, I would say, geez. I hope not. But the truth the truth is, you get you get renewed every year, with a with a sense of possibility and purpose by the people that you meet, and and none more so than the survivors of of modern day slavery and the survivor leaders that that that that step up on this. The thing that we we miss when we when we overlook the potency and we wallow in the tragedy and we wallow in the pity, as you say, is is is this extraordinary reserve of of of energy, of potential, of people that have seen the worst of humanity and are determined to support and build out the best of humanity as a result of that.
Justin Dillon:You've you've written a few books, and, probably the hardest thing to write for a book is the title. It's the billboard. Right? It's the it's the promise.
Benjamin Skinner:Yeah.
Justin Dillon:And words words matter in books, but word you know, words really matter when it comes to writing a title. And for your book, you called slavery a crime. That's a very different word than you you chose to use the word crime. Why did you say that?
Benjamin Skinner:Well, the the quote itself is is a it's a great line from William Lloyd Garrison, the great abolitionist from the 19th century, and he was talking about slavery as a, a crime so monstrous, a sin so god defying, that it casts into the shade all other distinctions among men. And that, I think, really summed, you know, for me when I would talk to, people like, Ganu Lakol, which is the name that I call, somebody who is in bonded labor in in a in a rock quarry in India. And he he had been born into debt bondage, that, the debt originated with his grandfather as far as they could tell. It was a debt originally of 62ยข for the meager bride price of of Ganu's grandmother. And 3 generations and 3, slave masters later, Ganu had to get up every morning and, use his bare hands and pikes and mortars and hammers to turn rock, that was pulled out of an illegal quarry, in a protected forest into sand, into fine grade silica sand.
Benjamin Skinner:And there's only one way in the quote unquote modern world that you can turn a profit off of handmade sand, and that is through slavery. And and so crime on crime on crime in that equation. And yet, even though the, the the local police in that particular district had known that the that the the slave master of of Ganu and his entire village was was credibly accused of murdering, several of the other workers. Those those workers were Dalit. They were what used to be called the untouchable cast.
Benjamin Skinner:Mhmm. And therefore, their their their their murders didn't didn't, even register.
Justin Dillon:Mhmm. Jeez. Well, Ben, how what's your take? We've never had a chance to talk about this, but, like, what's your take on laws like the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act here in the United States? Like, I'd love to get your sense.
Justin Dillon:You've had a you had a wide wide angle view. You know, some folks who's coming into this are starting jobs. This is called the responsible supply chain podcast. There are people that are that are just getting started in this, but you've got you've got some depth. What what systemic changes have you seen at a government and corporate level?
Justin Dillon:And what's your take?
Benjamin Skinner:You know, we've we've made significant strides over the last 15 years. I would say, you know, in the Bush administration, which had this brand new mandate on trafficking, it was there was a, I would say, a disproportionate focus on the on commercial sexual exploitation. And, in the Obama administration, there was there was really an attempt to rebalance that, to look at what the ILO and and others were saying about where the balance of of forced labor took place. And, I give our friend ambassador Dibaka a lot of credit here for for, and, of course, his top deputy, Allison Friedman, close friend. Mhmm.
Benjamin Skinner:You know, they she she said to him, what what are gonna be what are gonna be the elements of your legacy here? And one of the things, that that they mutually decided on was focus on getting forced labor out of American markets by getting it out of supply chains of major corporations. And, at the end of the Obama administration, congress closed this loophole in the 1930 tariff act. It used to say that, forced labor was banned in products, destined for our US markets unless we couldn't make enough of that stuff in the US to to meet consumer demand. And think of all the things that slavery are in most of those things these days.
Benjamin Skinner:And and so Congress closed that loophole. Beginning of the Trump administration, they began to to to seize products. The first first seizure was a shipment of soda ash and out of out of a prison labor camp in China and and, it was seized coming into Newark. And, and then you saw this crescendo, and customs and border protection with this mandate really started to put companies on notice. Hey.
Benjamin Skinner:If you have forced labor in your stuff, we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna keep it out of US markets. And, and I would say that that was a really helpful trend, that that you saw kind of crescendoing until about 2022. And then the Uyghurs Forced Labor Prevention Act came in. And and this is this is a good law. This is in no way on the line influence on Mhmm.
Benjamin Skinner:On policy here. But it did, I think, take a lot of the bandwidth of enforcement. And so so in the last 2 years, you've seen, somewhere in the order of 3.8, $3,900,000,000 worth of good seas coming into the United States, supposedly with forced labor, in its allegedly with forced labor in its, in its production. But all of that, every penny of that has been coming out of, Xinjiang, and coming out of, and and seized under the UFLPA. What I would love to see right now and what I would love all of your listeners to get behind, and and what I would love all of us in this in this, community that cares about this to get behind, is a rebalancing of enforcement so that it isn't, you know, a a a a one horse town.
Benjamin Skinner:There there is forced labor and products coming out of India. There's forced labor and products coming out of Malaysia. There's forced labor product in products coming out of most parts of the globe. Right? Mhmm.
Benjamin Skinner:And and fundamentally, if the United States is going to walk the talk of of of of protecting its its markets from products made with forced labor and making sure there's no safe harbor for those products here in the United States Mhmm. Then we've got to enforce across all of these countries.
Justin Dillon:I I couldn't agree more. And do you feel like and it seems like and we've seen we've seen the, the genesis of laws coming out of the the California transparency law and then the UK. And they just they're you're right. There's been a crescendo, not just on trade bans, but also on on on regulations where just, you know, most companies, I don't know, above 500,000,000 to, you know, a 1,000,000,000 in revenue, you've got one to many, regulations to bear. And and and Europe's Europe's got EU's got, you know, some coming down.
Justin Dillon:It's interesting that the EU law forced labor ban that's coming into, you know, at some point in the next few years, it it's indiscriminate of where it comes from. It doesn't matter if it's Western China or whatever. It's it's it's indiscriminate. Do you think that's do you think here in the US, we're gonna take it? We don't tend to take cues from anywhere in the US.
Justin Dillon:But, like, do you think that that's a good kind of, like, signal, like, yeah, if the EU is gonna be banning globally that we need to get back to basics around that here in the US?
Benjamin Skinner:So, I mean, first of all, the law in the US is quite clear that it doesn't matter where the products are coming from if it's if it's got forced labor and it shouldn't be coming into our markets. So it's just a quest it's just a question of enforcement. I would say the u the the EU could take a a a cue or 2 from the the US in terms of how it was enforcing the law right up until about 2022, and I hope gets back to and for I I, you know, I I hold out faith. I know many of the people in the forced labor division and customs and border protection. I think they're gonna do the right thing, and and start start responding to many of these credible petitions, dozens of credible petitions that have been put in front of them by a whole range of of, you know, of of organizations about forced labor and supply chains.
Benjamin Skinner:I think that they're gonna clear clear, those hopefully quite soon. I would say the one thing that caught my attention on c s triple d on this European law this new law that you mentioned. And I learned this for the actually, to be honest, for the first time last week, the penalties can be up to 5% of global revenue, right, for for these companies. Fines of up to 5% of global revenue. That's 5% of of one of these companies?
Benjamin Skinner:I mean, that's that's beyond many of their profit margins. Right? I mean, that would be crippling. So if you're one of those companies, you have a massive imperative to at least map your supply chain and and to put in place best in practice, policies to to get these to get these, to get forced labor out.
Justin Dillon:This is the reason why we started this show. Freedom, we meet amazing folks in companies every day that have been handed this mandate to map, monitor, and mitigate forced labor in their supply chains. That that work is so massive. Like, the requirements don't match capacity at a lot of companies. And even technology can only do so much because these supply chains have been built not just with technology, with commercial relationships, you know, personal relationships.
Justin Dillon:Yeah. It's just a lot put together that all of a sudden they have to do this. But we call this the responsible supply chain show for a reason because we're here to help this new emerging workforce, inside of these companies. Given all that you know, given all that you've seen, and you're still learning just like I am, what advice would you give someone who is just getting started, you know, in the responsible supply chain role, in a responsible supply chain role?
Benjamin Skinner:It's it's it's such a good question. I think for me, the first thing to do is to map your supply chain and to really understand what the working conditions are likely to be at all tiers of that supply chain. And I know that sounds daunting, particularly if you're a company of significant size with with, manifold vendors all over the world. But there are a few areas that I would really focus in on. One of them is any areas that have low wage migrant workers in your supply chain.
Benjamin Skinner:And these are areas where, as we've seen through our work in Malaysia, through our work in, in Mauritius, through our work in Indonesia, through our work in India, now our work in Taiwan, these are areas where oftentimes these migrant workers will will pay recruiters in their home countries, in many cases, exorbitant, oftentimes illegal fees, illegally high fees, to get jobs overseas on the promise that they will be making orders of magnitude more than they find out that they're actually making when they get to those jobs. They have their passports taken away. They are oftentimes, living and working in deplorable conditions. They they there's restriction on their movement. All of these things I'm listing are among the 11 indicators of forced labor that the ILO puts out there.
Benjamin Skinner:Right? And and if you've got a situation like that, you need to act to remedy it. Through our work in the first investigation that we did into these conditions in apparel factories in Malaysia, what we what we found was that the American Apparel and Footwear Association, the largest industry lobby group, for for apparel in the United States, they did the right thing. And they they came together with the the, the the Fair Labor Association, the FLA, and they came up with a commitment to responsible recruitment that basically says no worker today, it says no worker pays for their should pay for their job. If they do, they need to be reimbursed.
Benjamin Skinner:They need to be made whole. And in our engagements alone, we've seen 1,000,000 of dollars going back in most recently from the the brands and retailers directly to those workers, but oftentimes, the suppliers also, contributing to those to those reimbursements. They have to have their identity documents returned to them if they haven't have them taken away, and they they they need to hold those identity documents. And, critically, they need clear terms of employment in their own language before they leave home. These are really basic simple standards
Justin Dillon:Yeah.
Benjamin Skinner:That that it is zero cost to put the policy out there, and to put that in your codes of conduct for all of your all of your suppliers. That is kind of 101. And then enforcement of that, I I think requires knowledge.
Justin Dillon:Ben Skinner, thank you for coming on. I hope you come back.
Benjamin Skinner:Real pleasure. Anytime, Justin.
Justin Dillon:Thanks, Ben. Okay. This is part of the show called The One Thing. This is, one takeaway from the interview that we just heard. Ben is so eloquent.
Justin Dillon:Part of his eloquence is the ability to quote others. And in in the interview, he talked to he quoted Jean Baptiste, who's, one of my favorite musicians, and I didn't know he's known for this quote. We as human beings need to confront the brutal reality while walking in unwavering faith. Confront brutal realities while walking in unwavering face. When working on responsible supply chains, the reality is or the work is to actually confront brutal realities, whether that is modern slavery and supply chains or the warming of the planets or the brutal reality that the business might be going in a different direction and you're trying to pull it in a different direction.
Justin Dillon:These are brutal realities. But the walking in unwavering faith is what makes the realities less scary. One thing I've learned is that courage doesn't come from inside of us. It comes from others. I believe that's why we call it encouragement.
Justin Dillon:You can't summon courage. You get it through osmosis. You get it by watching other people be courageous. And for those working in responsible supply chains, all of you, all of us need courage. We need to be encouraged and find that faith so that we can confront brutal realities.
Justin Dillon:I'm fortunate to have friends like Ben and others who give me courage. And I'm hoping for you that you can find people in your work or in your space, in your community that will give you the courage to confront the brutal realities so that we can build a world that we all want to live in. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe to this podcast so that we can build up an audience of maybe 8 people next time. Thank you so much.