Bar Association Warns Corporations to Clean Up Supply Chains
The president of the American Bar Association is set to urge chief executives at all of America’s Fortune 500 companies to commit to ending human-rights abuses in their supply chains. The ABA president will send executives the message in a letter by the end of this year, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Even though a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision has made it harder to hold U.S. companies liable for child labor, slavery, human trafficking and dangerous working conditions among their suppliers, the risks to corporate brands grows by the day, said Chris Johnson, the former general counsel of General Motors North America who heads the ABA business section’s supply-chain initiative.
The Star Tribune quoted Johnson: “Regulation is increasing. Litigation is increasing. It’s astounding to me that companies don’t get out ahead of this. It’s a time bomb.”
Some companies have tried. Johnson credits Starbucks, Microsoft and Coca-Cola with setting examples in assessing and addressing the risks of human-rights violations in their supply chains.
