Hasn’t Starbucks had multiple instances of these sorts of headlines? I feel like nothing really happens about it
Standard corporate cycle. Use illegal/slave labor, get caught, media tour oopsie, pay fine aka cost of business, everyone forgets, repeat
Owners/ceos need to be held accountable so they actually care what is happening
While I generally agree that C-levels need to be held accountable, I fear that will just lead to paid patsies taking the fall. I think the board of directors should be held accountable.
everyone forgets
Do we? I will never forget Starbucks uses child slaves. What good does that do?
Don’t shop there. It’s the only thing they care about. And tell people you know or can influence via social media or other means.
Starbucks will not have wanted to be using slaves, they only pay the workers 2¢ on the cup anyway. It is a fairly minor expense in the greater scheme of things.
What it is, is an emergent risk in extended labour chains (or “cascades”). Particularly prevalent in harvest work. At some point your supply chain transparency breaks down, how ever many steps of outsourcing deep that might be.
Unsurprisingly the gangmaster not actually paying his workers is likely the lowest bidder, so in the cruellest sense of the “free” market, every company wants to use slave labour. But to a global business with at least some accountability, this is a massive fuck up in oversight.
You could think of it as stochastic slave trading, if you wanted to over-intellectualise it. Certainly oligopsonies generate market pressures that strongly incentivise the emergence of modern slavery and labour abuse in the supply chain.
This is just apologia for Starbucks’ core capitalist nature.
At some point your supply chain transparency breaks down, how ever many steps of outsourcing deep that might be.
No? If you restricted your purchasing to people growing coffee in specific areas with a high degree of oversight and frequent audits, this wouldn’t happen. The coffee would cost (them) a lot more, of course, but it’s certainly possible to do this.
The point is an oligarchy could incentivize high worker wages and ethical business practices through lots of mechanisms, the primary one being “pay more money for your supplies.” They don’t. We should be burying all these companies in the grave.
I’m no corporate shill, but the verification and constant need for reverification must be pretty challenging to enforce.
What’s the point of certification if this still happens??
People that care about the impact of their choices as consumers can be hoodwinked and retained as loyal customer basis.
Let’s face it: Even most people who read this thinks, “That sucks, someone should do something about that,” then goes back to drinking Starbucks
More likely, the people drinking Starbucks aren’t going to hear about a story from reporterbrasil.org.br
Slave and child labour call that Huckleberry Finn
