Modern Slavery, What Are You Doing About It?

Global GreenTag International is moving quickly to help activate Australia's first ever Modern Slavery Act with the development of a new company assessment tool for Australia that will help to eliminate possibilities of trafficking or slavery in product supply chains and aid tracking and reporting

In partnership with BRE, the UK based, international, multi-disciplinary building science centre, Global GreenTag International is developing a localised version of BRE's pioneering Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard (ELS) and associated product assessment process – ahead of the anticipated enactment of the Commonwealth of Australia's Modern Slavery Act and in light of the enactment of the New South Wales Government's Modern Slavery Act 2018.

David Baggs, CEO and Program Director for Global GreenTag said, "Global GreenTag is partnering with BRE to bring a mature ELS tool to Australia at a time when Modern Slavery legislation has been enacted already in the state of NSW and is likely to be introduced throughout Australia in the coming months. We have been engaging with BRE from the time that we formally supported the Australian Human Rights Commission's call for Modern Slavery legislation in late 2017. It is already something Global GreenTag does at a product level and we want to be able to support companies, verifiers and the industry in general to engage with the new legislation in as cost efficient a manner possible. This collaboration will certainly do that."

Nigel Jones, Team Leader – Sustainable Products at BRE said "The Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard for Australia will enable any organization to demonstrate to customers, partners and other stakeholders, their commitment to eliminating any possibility of trafficking or slavery in their supply chain. It will enable companies to go beyond compliance with the outlined reporting requirements of the Modern Slavery Bill 2018 which was introduced to the Australian Parliament at the end of June".

The Ethical Labour Sourcing Standard has been created to recognize those who wish to seek third party assurance of their responsible and ethical business practices and provide a maturity pathway for continuous improvement.

The Standard specifies the requirements for organizational management to demonstrate an on-going commitment to the principles of ethical labour sourcing as part of a holistic framework. The framework comprises criteria for evaluating the maturity of the performance of the organization under twelve issues. The overall verification is not based on an aggregation of the levels of maturity in these issues, but is based on a commitment to improve through an agreed set of objectives.

Participation in the standard can be achieved through self-assessment or to a more robust level using third party verification through the easy-to-use online ELS platform.