Scandal - Inside the Global Supply Chains of 50 Top Companies

Why is the global business model in such bad shape?
With global GDP having trebled in just 30 years and major corporations commanding 60 per cent of global production, transport and services through their supply chains, the respect for rights, the guarantee of minimum living wages and collective bargaining for a fair share of the profits through higher wages with safe, secure and skilled work should be the norm.

Instead we have a model where companies can’t or won’t identify their supply chains and their hidden workforce.

They preside over profits based on low wages, lobby against minimum living wages or regulations designed to ensure safe and secure work and turn a blind eye to the use of informal work or even slavery in their employ.

Workers know it’s a scandal; their families know it’s a scandal. Governments know too but lack the courage to act. Even the CEOs of 50 of the world’s largest companies know it’s a scandal, but to admit it would be to accept responsibility.

The 50 companies listed in this report could act to change the model of global trade. They have the resources and the reach.

Working people pay the price of the scandal – slavery, informal work, precarious short-term contracts, low wages, unsafe work and dangerous chemicals, forced overtime, attacks by governments on labor laws and
social protection, inequality – it’s all part of a great global scandal that is today driven by corporate greed with an eternal quest for profit and shareholder value.

Consequently we have a business model that has lost its moral compass. For big business, labor is increasingly just a commodity and labor rights are bad for business.

Just 50 companies hold a combined wealth equivalent to that of 100 nations. Our governments – even those democratically elected – are influenced by their interests.