Giving Compass' Take:

• Meg Wilcox gives six ways that companies can start changing the way businesses and their supply chains operate for the better and be a 'force for good.'

• What are the potential barriers of more agency for supply chain workers? How can we ensure a more ethical supply chain?

• This commodities giant has rolled out a new sustainable supply chain technology. 

"We were forced to work around the clock. We never saw land. They beat us. Whipped us. The company hunted us day and night," intone Burmese workers in "Ghost Fleet," a Vulcan Inc documentary about slavery on fishing vessels.

The Ghost Fleet clip opened the GreenBiz20 workshop "Putting People First: How to be a Force for Good in Your Labor Practices," because moderator Jack Kittinger, senior director of practice at Conservation International and a professor at Arizona State University, said he wanted to put a face to the mind-numbing numbers — 40 million people in modern slavery today, 16 million of them in the private sector.

Eradicating forced labor, a persistent scourge throughout human history has no easy answers and requires collaboration across companies, NGOs, government and other partners.

"It’s our collective responsibility to make sure that these occurrences are brief, rare and nonrecurrent," Kittinger said. "It’s about putting safeguards in place to lower risk to the lowest level possible, and having access to remedy when abuses happens."

Here are six takeaways from the workshop about how companies can do that.

  1. Acknowledge the problem and your role in it
  2. Cover the basics
  3. Fish or cut bait? It depends.
  4. Step up access to remedy
  5. Expand your moral perimeter
  6. Keep boots on the ground

Read the full article about companies being a 'force for good' in their supply chains by Meg Wilcox at GreenBiz.