Addresses human rights in supply chain

Why shareholder democracy is pivotal

What a brand requires of its suppliers, and whether it checks, is decided inside the brand, which is why this outcome rests on corporate conduct and sits at the top of the scale. The rating covers four things: whether a company bans prison labor in its supply chain, whether it asks suppliers to pay a living wage, whether it publishes a human rights policy at all, and whether it has audited for compliance. Each is a line in a supplier code or a purchase order rather than a law somebody has to pass first, and companies with the same suppliers choose differently. Ford, General Motors, Hormel Foods, Marriott and Michael Kors all adopted public no fees recruitment policies across their supply chains after a campaign by the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, and Hormel's supplier code now forbids charging job seekers recruitment fees and bars bonded, indentured and involuntary prison labor. Burger King and McDonald's take part in the farmworker-run Fair Food Program and Wendy's, alone among the five largest fast-food chains, does not, even though its own shareholders backed a report on protecting workers in its supply chain in 2021 with more than 95 percent of the votes cast for and against, in a year when over 100 investors and six state treasurers wrote to the company. Hershey published its first comprehensive human rights policy in April 2019 covering child labor, forced labor and living wages, after a decade of engagement in which a 2017 resolution was withdrawn on the company's commitment to write it. A political fight runs alongside and it is the lesser one. A study by the campaign group Finanzwende says lobbying by BlackRock and financial industry groups stripped due diligence duties for asset managers out of Europe's corporate sustainability due diligence directive, and later amendments pushed application to 2029, but the directive was adopted and is in force, and BlackRock did not answer when asked to respond. No rule in Brussels or Washington decides what a company writes into its supplier code or whether it sends auditors, so the lever that reaches this outcome is the purchase order, and it belongs to the shareholders of the company that writes it.

Sources

• JUST Capital 2025 Ranking Methodology (as of February 3, 2025), JUST Capital
• Shareholder Campaign to Eradicate Forced Labor Yields Multiple Corporate Commitments, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
• Supplier Code of Conduct, Hormel Foods Corporation
• Wendy's, Coalition of Immokalee Workers
• Shareholders Calling for Human Rights Protections for Essential Food Chain Workers Prevail at Wendy's Annual Meeting, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility
• The Wendy's Company, Form 8-K, Item 5.07 (2021 annual meeting voting results), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• Corporate Actions to Address Child Labor in Cocoa Production: Case Study, The Hershey Company, Investor Advocates for Social Justice
• The TJX Companies, Inc., 2024 definitive proxy statement, Proposal 4, and Form 8-K of 6 June 2024, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• NIKE, Inc., Form 8-K, Item 5.07, annual meetings of 12 September 2023 and 10 September 2024, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission
• EU: 'Unprecedented' lobbying from financial sector left industry 'largely exempt' from CSDDD, says report; incl. co. non-response, Business & Human Rights Resource Centre
• Corporate sustainability due diligence, European Commission
• Press Release: End Uyghur Forced Labor Coalition Demands Companies Disclose Corporate Lobbying Against the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act, Coalition to End Forced Labour in the Uyghur Region

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