TheCorporateCounsel.net

Gunster’s Bob Lamm recently blogged about an issue that he’s reluctantly concluded needs to be on the board’s agenda – human trafficking.  Here’s his reasoning:

There is a strong case to be made why businesses need to work on [human trafficking’s] elimination, but we need to make that case. One of the key components of that case should be apparent to us all; can you say “supply chain”? As boards increasingly take deep dives into how their companies address supply chain challenges, they should ask questions about the components of their supply chains: Where are goods coming from? Are they the products of forced labor? Child labor? If that doesn’t move a board, how about reputation? How would the company’s investors, employees, customers, and others react if they learned that its products are produced by women who are virtually enslaved, making far less than what we euphemistically call “subsistence wages”? How would that play out in the media?

Just how serious an issue human trafficking is was brought home to me when Cleveland hosted the 2016 Republican National Convention. A friend of mine was working for one of our economic development groups and attended a presentation that the FBI gave to downtown hotel operators about the potential human trafficking issues that surround any large destination event. The presentation was, in his words, “sobering.” Directors have a lot on their plates, but Bob makes a good case that this is another issue that like needs board-level attention.

– John Jenkins