Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses how fashion brands are responding to modern slavery in their supply chains in light of COVID-19, while examining the role of civil society in pushing for corporate accountability for remediation and protection of vulnerable workers.

Paper long abstract:

Over the last decade, the garment industry caught attention for human rights abuses across supply chains of fashion brands. Despite the potential for social corporate responsibility to address these abuses, brands failed to improve working conditions for supply chain workers. Social compliance auditing and worker engagement technologies, where corporations spend most of their ethical budget, seemed unable to detect and remediate modern slavery incidents. There are also gaps between companies’ reporting under modern slavery legislation, such as the UK Modern Slavery Act 2015, and their practices towards suppliers and workers. COVID-19 has exacerbated human rights abuses in global supply chains, particularly for garment workers, making them more vulnerable to modern slavery. The unfulfilled payments of orders of fashion brands sparked a strong civil society reaction, leading to initiatives such as the “Pay Up” campaign to pressure companies into addressing wage theft and increased risk of modern slavery. Given the limitations of standard models of accountability to address abuses in global supply chains, this paper aims to redefine accountability in an unequal and post-pandemic world by proposing the use of Rubenstein’s (2007) surrogate accountability, a next to best model of accountability deriving from non-corporate stakeholders. Using this framework, this paper discusses how businesses are responding to modern slavery in their supply chains in light of COVID-19, while examining the role of civil society in pushing for accountability for remediation and protection of vulnerable workers. Findings raise implications for top-down (modern slavery legislation) and bottom-up (civil society campaigns) models of accountability.