Modern Slavery in the U.K. Fashion Textile Industry: Olly Kennedy

This episode is a conversation with Olly Kennedy who is a consultant and PhD Researcher at the University of Liverpool focused on manufacturing operations and supply chain.  In this talk, we examine the U.K. Modern Slavery Act, the exploitation in the fashion textile industry, the notion of boundaries, the power of consumption, and discuss frameworks as possible solutions to these complex social ills.   Recently, the Guardian announced that "the UK government is considering the introduction of a clothing trade adjudicator, who would monitor large retailers’ relationships with their suppliers. A former director of Labour Market Enforcement, Matthew Taylor, has also backed the concept amid fears that voluntary measures have failed to make substantial improvements to pay and working conditions in the fashion industry. The issue has been highlighted in the past year by revelations about conditions in the Leicester clothing factories supplying the online fashion group Boohoo as well as difficulties for overseas suppliers as orders were cancelled because of the global Covid pandemic (Source: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/22/uk-considers-clothing-trade-adjudicator-tackle-labour-abuses-working-conditions-mps)." "The U.K. Modern Slavery Act will give law enforcement the tools to fight modern slavery, ensure perpetrators can receive suitably severe punishments for these appalling crimes and enhance support and protection for victims. It received Royal Assent on Thursday 26 March 2015 (Source: gov.uk/government/collections/modern-slavery-bill)." The act will: consolidate and simplify existing offences into a single act ensure that perpetrators receive suitably severe punishments for modern slavery crimes (including life sentences) enhance the court’s ability to put restrictions on individuals where it’s necessary to protect people from the harm caused by modern slavery offences create an independent anti-slavery commissioner to improve and better coordinate the response to modern slavery introduce a defence for victims of slavery and trafficking place a duty on the secretary of state to produce statutory guidance on victim identification and victim services enable the secretary of state to make regulations relating to the identification of and support for victims make provision for independent child trafficking advocates introduce a new reparation order to encourage the courts to compensate victims where assets are confiscated from perpetrators enable law enforcement to stop boats where slaves are suspected of being held or trafficked require businesses over a certain size to disclose each year what action they have taken to ensure there is no modern slavery in their business or supply chains