Slavery Footprint Campaign

We believe in using the free market to free people. At its core, the Slavery Footprint website
allows consumers to visualize how their consumption habits are connected to modern-day
slavery. Through our "Free World" mobile app and online action center, we provide consumers
an outlet to voice their demand for things made without slave labor. We are collectively raising
our voices so we can work with companies to manufacture our stuff "Made in a Free World."
Based in Oakland, California, the Slavery Footprint team works to engage individuals, groups,
and businesses to build awareness for and create deployable action against forced labor,
human trafficking, and modern day slavery. In addition to creating and developing the online
tools, the organization is also engaged in off-line community education and mobilization
programs.
Source: http://slaveryfootprint.org/about/#aboutus
Free2Work
Free2Work provides consumers with information on how products relate to modern-day
slavery. Through the site you can learn how your favorite brands are working to address forced
and child labor. You can additionally access in-depth information about industry issues through
our industry pages and news feeds, and you can learn more about trafficking and supply chains
through our blog posts.
The global slave trade is complex, and product supply chains remain opaque, making it difficult
for even the most informed consumers to know how their purchases are connected to labor
abuses. Today, brands are more aware of potential issues within their supply chains. Many
work with a wide range of initiatives such as monitoring and certification programs to attempt
to assure consumers that their products do not violate worker rights. The plethora of
approaches is extremely confusing for busy consumers who seek an answer to the simple
question, what is the story behind my products?
There is a tale behind each barcode. Most products travel through various parts of the world
and through many hands before they reach us. Our goal at Free2Work is to shed light on this
process. We aim to empower consumers with information about the likelihood that products
are made with forced or child labor. Free2Work conducts extensive research before assigning
grades on a scale of A to F to each brand. We look at company efforts in four main
categories: policies, monitoring, transparency, and worker rights (see What do the Ratings
Mean? for more information).
Additionally, Free2Work is continually engaged in dialogue with companies about their supply
chain practices. For companies seeking further resources, we are currently creating Industry
Best Practice Reports, to be released in 2012. Each report will reveal the industrys

performance on key Free2Work indicators, highlight best practice leaders, and call attention to
areas of needed growth.
Free2Work is a strategic tool that promotes transparency in supply chains, empowers
consumers to make informed decisions, and mediates communication between consumers and
companies.
Organizations Behind Free2Work:
Free2Work is a project created by Not For Sale and supported by the International Labor Rights
Forum.
Not For Sale equips and mobilizes smart activists to deploy innovative solutions to slavery in
their own backyards and across the globe. NFSC has developed an international network of
people dedicated to ending slavery and forced labor. Sign up for NFS email list.
International Labor Rights Forum, founded in 1985, promotes just and humane treatment for
workers worldwide. ILRF connects policy makers and activists to workers struggles around the
world, promoting better trade policy and legal protections against child and forced labor,
discrimination of all kinds, and infringements on workers right to organize and bargain
collectively. Sign up for ILRFs email list.
Funding for this project has been provided by Humanity United and by the Juniper Networks
Foundation Fund, a corporate advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.
Free2Work is an ever-changing and evolving resource. As companies processes for addressing
forced labor improve, so too will their grades. Please keep in mind that we continuously update
this site with new brand and product assessments. We encourage you to provide feedback by
email at feedback@free2work.org.
Ratings
What do Free2Work grades represent?
Free2Work grades are a measure of a brandss efforts to make sure that child and forced labor
do not exist in its supply chain. They are based on publicly available information and data selfreported by companies.
How does Free2Work conduct assessments?
Overview:
Free2Work asks each brand a set of 61 questions about its labor policies and practices through
our Evaluation Tool. Each question falls in one of four categories: Policies, Transparency &
Traceability, Monitoring & Training, or Worker Rights. We ask most questions three times: once
for each of three major production phases in the brands supply chain. If a company owns

multiple brands, we either assess them separately or clump them under one evaluation,
depending on how similarly the supply chains are managed.
In conducting a brand evaluation, our research team first assesses a brands own publications
alongside relevant independent reports and data such as third party audit findings and nongovernmental organization (NGO) publications. Next we send our questionnaire to the brand
for information and comment, which we in turn review; we allot six to eight weeks for this
process. Where a brand is non-responsive, we note this on its scorecard. Once finalized, we
make all evaluations publicly available through our site for companies, consumers, workers and
the activist community to access. We welcome you to submit information we may have
missed, including reports of labor violations, to feedback@Free2Work.org.
Free2Work grades each brand according to its response to the risks specific to its supply
chain. If a brand is operating in an industry and regions where there is a high prevalence of
child and forced labor, it will be graded more strictly than one operating only in lower risk
situations. This means that in order to receive an A, such a brand will need to prove that it has
significant mechanisms in place to protect workers from abuse.
Supply Chain Phases:
There are many different sorts of supply chains. Some products pass through dozens of hands
and countries before they reach the shelves. They can involve harvesting, manufacturing,
transportation, intermediaries, and many other phases. Others take little production and are
made close to home. Our challenge at Free2Work is to compare these very different supply
chains and companies to one another in a way that is meaningful.
In order to do this, we have chosen to simplify things and focus on only three production
phases in each supply chain. We look at each brands management of one main raw material,
one main input, and the final stage of production. We generally evaluate a standard set of
production processes per industry, and customize these to represent individual brands efforts
where necessary. For example if we are assessing an apparel company, we will standardly look
at its management of cotton harvesting (the raw material), textiles production (the input), and
cut-make-trim manufacturing (the final stage of production). We assess the companys efforts
to prevent trafficking at each of these three levels. In the cases of select industries with less
complicated supply chains we assess only one or two production processes instead of three.
Evaluation Categories:
Free2Work asks each brand a set of 61 questions about its production policies and
practices. We ask most of these questions three times: once for each production phase. The
questions fall into four categories of assessment:

1. Policies: We evaluate the brands code of conduct, sourcing and subcontracting policies,
and involvement with other organizations working to combat child and forced labor.
2. Transparency & Traceability: We look at both how thoroughly the brand understands its
own supply chain, and whether it discloses critical information to the public.
3. Monitoring & Training: We measure the adequacy of the brands monitoring program to
address the specific issues of child and forced labor.
4. Worker Rights: We assess the degree to which the brand seeks to actively support worker
well-being by ensuring that workers claim their rights at work through organizing or earning
a living wage.
Risk Analysis:
As mentioned, supply chains are diverse and often complicated. In order to evaluate
companies next to each other we need to understand the different risks in which they
operate. The prevalence of child and forced labor is much greater in certain countries and
production processes than in others, so Free2Work grades those companies operating in high
risk situations on a stricter scale than those operating in low risk areas.
For example, in the jewelry industry, forced and child labor has been found in gold mining in
Burkina Faso. Free2Work thus considers sourcing gold from Burkina Faso to be a high risk
activity, which means that serious precautions need to be taken in production to ensure against
trafficking. On the other hand, neither child nor forced labor is prevalent in Canadian gold
mining operations, and Canadian rule of law is relatively strong on trafficking. Free2Work
consequently considers sourcing gold from Canada to be low risk.
If a company has low risk production, it does not necessarily mean that no trafficking exists in
its supply chain, but rather that it is less of a risk relatively speaking. We grade brands sourcing
from high risk areas on a more rigorous scale than those sourcing from low risk areas, but
expect that even companies with relatively low risk production have certain policies and
procedures in place. Likewise, a company can still receive an A if it is operating in high risk
situations, but it is expected to take more precautions to ensure against abuses.
Free2Work draws risk data primarily from the U.S. Department of Labors List of Goods
Produced With Child Labor or Forced Labor (DOL List). The DOL List reports on the existence
of the use of child and forced labor by country and good. We evaluate each of a companys
main production processes separately for risk. Companies that either do not publicly disclose
or have not traced their countries of production are considered to be operating in high risk
situations.
Free2Work uses the U.S. Department of State Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in
Persons Trafficking in Persons Report Tier Placements as a secondary source of risk
information. The report measures government efforts to prevent trafficking. If one of a
companys production processes exists chiefly in Tier 1 countries, we grade the process on a

low risk scale as long as it is not also on the DOL List (if a process is on the DOL List we
consider it to be high risk regardless). The rationale behind this is that government efforts
and rule of law are fundamental to the prevention of trafficking, and certain company policies
may be less crucial where governments are fulfilling their roles. If a production process is
marked as low risk it does not mean that there is no risk of child or forced labor, but rather
that external protections are likely in place to supplement company efforts. (Note that the one
exception is that while Colombia is Tier 1 for trafficking in persons, the labor abuses that
routinely take place in the country are so severe that Free2Work has removed it from its low
risk list.)
Free2Work finally draws data where applicable from other expert reports and relevant news
articles: in some cases there are specific allegations of abuse in a companys supply chain; in
these circumstances the production process will be marked as high risk regardless of the
supply chain.
All production processes that are not either high risk or low risk are considered to be
medium risk and graded on a medium scale.
The following are Free2Works risk definitions. In a given production process:
High risk =
1. One or more of the top five countries from which the company sources is on the DOL List; or
2. The company does not disclose its top five countries of production; or
3. An independent party has made credible allegations of abuse
Medium Risk =
1. Zero of the top five countries from which the company sources are on the DOL List; but
2. Not all of the top five countries from which the company sources are listed as Tier 1 on
the TiP Report
Low Risk=
1. Zero of the top five countries from which the company sources are on the DOL List; and
2. All of the top five countries from which the company sources are listed as Tier 1 on the TiP
Report
Finally, the following are the spread of potential grades a company can receive by risk category:
If at least one production process is low risk: Minimum score: C; Maximum score: A+
If at least one production process is medium risk: Minimum score: D-; Maximum score: A+
If all production processes are high risk: Minimum score: F, Maximum score: A+

Scope of Evaluations:
In some cases corporations own multiple brands with similar supply chains and manage these
as a unit; for instance a companys head office may take responsibility for ensuring that the
suppliers of each of its brands are monitored under a single auditing program. In such a case
Free2Work will assess the corporations brands as a unit.
An example of this is the corporation Gap Inc., which owns five brands (Gap, Banana Republic,
Old Navy, Piperlime and Athleta). Gap manages the supply chains of all five brands under one
umbrella CSR program. Free2Work in response grades all five brands under one umbrella
evaluation.
Where supply chain management practices differ from brand to brand, we assess each brand
separately. In rarer cases, especially where certification systems are involved, a single brand
may manage different product lines with significantly different labor policies; in these cases we
will assess each product line seperately. Free2Work maps each companys ownership
structures against its corporate social responsibility (CSR) management structures to determine
the scope of its evaluation(s).
In all cases, regardless of the scope of the assessment, consumers can search for Free2Work
grades easily through recognizable brand and product line names.
Source: http://www.free2work.org/
Buy Responsibly
We Buy, They Pay
Some of the everyday products that you find at your local shopping centre have been produced
by people working in sub-human conditions for little or no pay on farms, fishing boats, textile
factories and food processing plants.
Buy Responsibly wants to raise consumers' awareness on the fact that the products that we buy
everyday may be made by people who have been trafficked for forced and exploited labour.
By asking our retailers for more social guarantees on the goods they merchandise, we, as
consumers, have the power to end trafficking in persons!
Buy Responsibly: ask your retailer about the products you buy and eliminate trafficking from
your shopping cart!

What role do I play in this issue?

It is true that trafficking for forced labour and migrant exploitation are global problems. But it is
also true that trafficking for forced labour and migrant exploitation are local problems. When
you purchase a product at your local shopping centre, you are indirectly supporting the way it
was produced. If the product is the result of someones forced labour, you are implicitly also
encouraging the company which has relied on forced labour to continue relying on forced
labour.
How can you make a difference?
If you are a conscious consumer, you prefer to buy products that have been produced ethically
- by people working in good conditions and earning a fair wage.
Source: http://www.buyresponsibly.org/