Dr. Sandie Morgan and Dave Stachowiak are joined by Benjamin Thomas Greer. His role at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services is as a Subject Matter Expert in the field of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation; specifically instructing and developing human trafficking courses for law enforcing and emergency personnel. They discuss the complexities and challenges of the California Supply Chain Act and how consumers can be advocates for ending modern day slavery within supply chains.

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Transcript

Dave [00:00:00] You’re listening to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. This is episode number 209, Who’s Watching the Watchdog? Is Supply Chain Transparency Working?

Production Credits [00:00:11] Produced by Innovate Learning, Maximizing Human Potential.

Dave [00:00:31] Welcome to the Ending Human Trafficking Podcast. My name is Dave Stachowiak.

Sandie [00:00:37] And my name is Sandie Morgan.

Dave [00:00:39] And this is the show where we empower you to study the issues, for you to be a voice, and make a difference in ending human trafficking. Sandie, I’m really interested in this conversation today as I am in virtually every conversation we have because we’re going to dive in on supply chain transparency. And this is something we’ve talked a lot about, and yet I don’t have a clear answer in my mind as to the question that we’re posing in this title, which is who’s watching the watchdog? This is a big question, right?

Sandie [00:01:09] It’s going to be a great interview.

Dave [00:01:11] I am glad to welcome to the show today, Benjamin Thomas Greer. He is in the role at the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services as a subject matter expert in the field of human trafficking and child sexual exploitation. Specifically, he’s instructing and developing human trafficking courses for law enforcement and emergency personnel. Before joining Cal OES, he served as a special deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice, office of the attorney general. There he led a team and a comprehensive report for the California attorney general entitled The State of Human Trafficking in California back in 2012. He has published numerous American law review and international journal articles and has presented and lectured in 10 different countries. Benjamin, so glad to welcome you to our show.

Benjamin [00:02:02] Thank you very much for having me.

Sandie [00:02:03] Well, I’m really excited to have you because I’ve been really impressed with how many articles you’ve researched and written and published, and I’ve especially been interested and followed your writing on supply chain transparency. And one of the articles that were really gripping was “Who’s watching the watchdog?” So, I thought we could have a conversation today about the efficacy of supply chain transparency. Are you up for that?

Benjamin [00:02:33] Absolutely, I’d love to.

Sandie [00:02:34] Okay. So, let’s just start with, would you explain why we support this idea of supply chain transparency? What does that mean to ending human trafficking?

Benjamin [00:02:49] Well, as we’ve seen in the last couple of decades, as the global economy extends and reaches into farther regions of the globe, consumers are probably less aware of where the products that they purchase come from and how they’re assembled. And that is individuals who want to exploit labor, the opportunity to coerce or force victims around the world in either the mining or manufacturing of raw minerals, manufacturing or assembly of products. And so, it’s really important for consumers if they want to be thoughtful and impactful consumers to understand the supply chain of the products that they’re purchasing.

Sandie [00:03:35] Okay. So, I was very excited when California passed the California Supply Chain Transparency Act. What does that actually do for us?

Benjamin [00:03:51] Well, first of all, California was the first government, either local, state or federal in the world to require such a disclosure. There are maybe some fundamental misunderstandings about what exactly what the California Supply Chain Transparency Act does. It does not require a company to affirmatively investigate their supply chain, but what it does do, is it requires the businesses to post on their home page what efforts, if any, that they do to ensure that forced labor or exploitation is not a part of their chain. So, a company would be in full compliance if they would literally post on their home page, we do nothing to investigate our supply chain. In my reading of the law, they would be in full compliance.

Sandie [00:04:41] That’s really disturbing. But with the focus on cause related marketing, corporate social responsibility. Are there some big companies that are actually going beyond the stated compliance requirements?

Benjamin [00:05:01] Absolutely. There are, you know, many companies have seen this as an opportunity to demonstrate to their consumer base and potentially new consumers that they are good corporate citizens, that they have meaningful oversight and procedures in place. And that was really kind of the design legislatively behind the California law is that it really wanted to provide the consumer with the information so that the consumer can influence corporate behavior through the use of their money and which products they wanted to support.

Sandie [00:05:38] OK, so this is basically a legislative initiative that encourages moral business behavior, right.?

Benjamin [00:05:50] Yes. By giving the consumer information and then the consumer can choose which corporate moral behavior they want to support.

Sandie [00:06:00] So, I’ve been the consumer and gone to a Webpage and not found anything that inspires me to be loyal to that brand. And I’ve called and usually all I get, and they are in compliance, is we have a zero-tolerance policy against slavery. Well, my next question is, so what do you do? And they don’t have an answer for that. And so that was part of the reason I was really interested in your article on opaque transparency. You’re very goo...