The sustainable investment firm CCLA, along with a coalition of investors, has called on U.K.-listed businesses to make a greater effort to tackle the issues of human trafficking, slavery and forced labor in supply chains. The investors have also been urging businesses to review, assess and disclose the effectiveness of their attempts to address these problems.
The investors said they’re concerned that not enough firms have shared their findings on modern slavery in supply chains, making it difficult to evaluate necessary corporate actions as well as identify and help victims. The investors include the Rathbones Group, Schroders and the Church Commissioners for England, according to Yahoo! News.
In a report analyzing the CCLA’s initiatives released August 29, a majority of FTSE 100 companies had published modern slavery statements in 2021 while the average compliance rate for the Modern Slavery Act came in at 89%. Only 20% of the companies reported action to find cases of slavery in their supply chains. Just 3% of those surveyed said they took action to fix their supply chains while another 18% said they took action to prevent further issues from occurring.
The coalition recently started engaging with members of the construction sector to tackle the issue of slave labor, including companies such as Balfour Beatty, Bellway, Persimmon, Taylor Wimpey Plc, The Berkeley Group Holdings and Vistry Group.
“It is heartening to see that investors have been able to take a number of the businesses we have engaged with on a journey to address modern slavery,” said Dr. Martin Buttle, the better work lead at CCLA. “While it is a long journey and slower than we would like, we recognize that finding, fixing and preventing modern slavery is very involved but absolutely vital if we are to meet Sustainable Development Goal 8.7 calling for its eradication by 2030.”
