California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act and Enforcement

Posted on March 6, 2012 by aviyer2010

An article in Bloombergbusinessweek (Feb 27,2012) describes the California Supply Chain Transperancy Act requiring retailers with more than $100 million in sales to ensure that their supply chains do not involve slave labor. But the article reports allegations of slave like conditions for Indonesian laborers aboard Korean fishing trawlers, that sell fish to Australian distributors. Because the catch is comingled, retailers are unable to track their product back to the trawler. Should retailers be required to develop tracking systems to guarantee compliance ? Is it sufficient for retailers to sign a contract wih distributors to ensure compliance or should they be required to confirm compliance by monitoring operations ?

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This entry was posted in Global Contexts, Operations Management, Service Operations, Supply Chain Issues, Sustainability and tagged Capability, Cost, Global, Loyal Customers, manufacturing, Outsourcing, regulation, Supply Chain. Bookmark the permalink.

1 Response to California’s Supply Chain Transparency Act and Enforcement

Kyle Harshbarger (@KyleHarshbarger) says:

March 8, 2012 at 2:03 pm

Is this essentially a tax on big companies? The bill basically changes the situation from “We don’t think our suppliers have bad labor practices,” to “We have to know exactly what supplier labor practices are.”
Manufacturing already uses ISO to declare what their practices are, and brag about being “ISO-9001 Certified”. That goes over pretty well in the US, and I presume foreign suppliers have some sort of ISO certification in manufacturing. Including a general labor practice section would be a small step for those companies, but foods and small consumer products might have a high hurdle to comply.

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