Business & Society

How can businesses combat human trafficking and their possible connections to it?

The International Labour Organization estimates more than 40 million people are currently trafficked for the purposes of exploiting their labor. Victims of human trafficking include children and adults induced to work through force, fraud, or coercion.

GSEM Professor Judith Schrempf-Stirling’s article “Business and Human Trafficking: A Social Connection and Political Responsibility Model (doi: 10.1177/0007650319872509), published in Business & Society addresses the ethical responsibilities of businesses related to human trafficking.

The article argues that due diligence, important as it is in raising consciousness of the problem of human trafficking, is insufficient because human trafficking is a structural injustice. Due diligence seeks to adapt existing business practices when firms should be instead asking whether those practices are causes of human trafficking in some way and then changing them if they are.

The kinds of changes that are useful in this regard include making commitments to strengthen collective bargaining and freedom of association rights, ensuring that price negotiations with suppliers are not so aggressive as to make it impossible for them to pay living wages to employees, and collaborating with peer companies to address systemic issues.

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