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8 - A Market in Deception? Ethically Certifying Exploitative Supply Chains

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

Genevieve LeBaron
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Jessica R. Pliley
Affiliation:
Texas State University, San Marcos
David W. Blight
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
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Summary

This chapter analyses the growing use of ethical certification schemes as a strategy to fight forced labor in the contemporary global economy. It draws on a large primary dataset from the Global Business of Forced Labour study, collected from 2016–2018, which sheds light into the business models of forced labor in the cocoa and tea industries as well as the effectiveness of ethical certification in combatting forced labor. Drawing on data that demonstrates that ethical certification schemes are failing to create worksites that are free from exploitation, I argue that ethical certification labelling is misleading consumers about the labor conditions involved in the goods they are buying. I explore the contradictions of selling "ethical" products that give the impression that goods have been made through labor standards that they are known to fall short of. I explore the challenge of modernizing historically successful strategies to combat slavery made-goods for use in the present.

Type
Chapter
Information
Fighting Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking
History and Contemporary Policy
, pp. 156 - 178
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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