Target 8.7: Eradicate forced labor, modern slavery, trafficking
Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms
Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
Why shareholder democracy is necessary
The ILO estimates 28 million people in forced labor, 86 percent of it in the private economy and 3.3 million of them children. The ILO also finds migrant workers more than three times as likely to be affected. Much of that forced labor sits in apparel, agriculture, electronics, seafood and mineral supply chains that feed listed brands and retailers. Buyer conduct on supplier audits, recruitment fees and traceability is therefore a necessary input. Shareholder voting is established. As You Sow's 2023 Tesla resolution sought a plan to eradicate child and forced labor from its supply chain by 2025. The CWC tracker records 2026 human rights proposals at Dollar General (29.2 percent) and PepsiCo (16.5 percent). The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility's No Fees campaign won ethical recruitment commitments from Ford, General Motors, Hormel, Marriott and Michael Kors, so workers pay no recruitment fees and keep their identity documents. Corporate lobbying has weakened the rules the target relies on. Reporting collected by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center describes intense financial sector lobbying, including by BlackRock, that left the industry largely exempt from the EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive. Much forced and child labor, however, occurs in domestic work, family farming and state-imposed settings outside listed supply chains, where enforcement and poverty reduction by governments are decisive. Buyer conduct is a necessary input for supply-chain forced and child labor, and governments must also act.
How this was scoredNecessary
Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes. Others must also act.
We have not yet written down the two answers behind this rating. Recording them on every item, so a reader can check the reasoning and not only the conclusion, is work in progress.
Every rating is the higher of two answers, one for what companies do and one for what they spend to stop the outcome, because the same vote reaches both. See the full method.
Sources
- 50 million people worldwide in modern slavery, International Labour Organization, 2022-09-12
- Tesla's Shareholders Call to Prevent Child Labor and Forced Labor in Supply Chains, As You Sow, 2023-05-02
- 2026 CWC Proxy Voting Tracker: Labour-Rights Related Proposals, Exclusions and Events, Committee on Workers' Capital, 2026-06-29
- EU: 'Unprecedented' lobbying from financial sector left industry 'largely exempt' from CSDDD, says report; incl. co. non-response, Business and Human Rights Resource Centre, 2025-04-10
- Shareholder Campaign to Eradicate Forced Labor Yields Multiple Corporate Commitments, Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility, 2017-08-09
What civil society organizations are helping owners on this
Coordinates the No Fees initiative, an engagement asking companies to adopt policies that workers in their supply chains never pay recruitment fees, receive written contracts and keep their identity documents.
Coordinated 57 investors with 4.4 trillion dollars in assets engaging 47 companies on forced labor risk tied to the Uyghur Region, asking them to map value chains, disengage from linked suppliers and disclose progress.
4 campaigns on record
Asked Tesla's board to report on whether and how it would eliminate child labor and forced labor, including cobalt mining risk in the Democratic Republic of Congo and concerns about Uyghur forced labor in China, from its supply chain by 2025, and to increase supply-chain transparency.
Result: Per Tesla's own SEC Form 8-K, the proposal received 0 votes for and 2,420,047,519 votes against (100% against). This was a 'floor' proposal not included in Tesla's advance proxy materials or on shareholders' proxy ballots, which is why the recorded 'for' vote was zero.
Despite the zero-vote outcome, CEO Elon Musk publicly committed at the meeting to third-party audits of Tesla's cobalt supply chain ('we will conduct a third-party audit... we'll put a webcam on the mine'). As of a July 2024 Forbes report, the follow-through fell short of that promise: Tesla's main cobalt supplier posted only a single low-resolution monthly satellite photo of the mine rather than live monitoring, and while Tesla said four scheduled (not surprise) audits found no child labor in 2023, an expert said this did not address the risk that cobalt from an estimated 40,000 children working in unregulated artisanal mines gets mixed into the supply chain before reaching Tesla's suppliers.
Tesla Inc. Form 8-K (annual meeting voting results), SEC EDGAR
Asked Nike to publish a report on worker-driven social responsibility and explain why it has not joined binding worker-safety agreements like the Pakistan Accord (which competitors Adidas and Puma have signed), and raised concerns about forced labor and roughly $2.2 million in allegedly unpaid wages owed to about 4,000 garment workers in Cambodia and Thailand.
With a coalition of over 60 investors
Result: Per Yahoo Finance/Reuters reporting on the following year's repeat vote, the 2023 version of this proposal 'was rejected by nearly 80%' of votes cast; the proposal did not pass. A repeat proposal was voted down again in 2024; we could not confirm the exact 2024 percentage from the sources retrieved.
We found no documented change in Nike's supply-chain labor agreements or practices as a result of this campaign.
Nike shareholders vote against proposal on workers' rights, Reuters (via Yahoo Finance)
Map value chains for direct and indirect links to the Uyghur Region, demonstrate disengagement from suppliers linked to forced labor, disclose progress and provide remedy to affected communities.
Result: not stated in source
Adopt no fees ethical recruitment provisions in supplier codes so that workers never pay recruitment fees, receive clear written contracts and retain their identity documents.
Result: All five companies committed
Ford, General Motors, Hormel Foods, Marriott and Michael Kors added no fees ethical recruitment provisions to their supplier codes.
Related subjects on other maps
How this rating was made
Every item on every one of our maps is read against one question: how far does this depend on the people who own companies voting their values? We answer it twice, once for what companies do and once for what they spend to stop the outcome, and take whichever answer is higher, since the same vote reaches both. The score carries its reasoning and its sources so that a reader can check it rather than take it.
- Pivotal. Owners voting their values can deliver most of the outcome.
- Necessary. Owners remove an obstacle nothing else removes, and others must also act.
- Helpful. Owners voting their values help, and others carry most of it.
- Independent. This moves without owners. Other levers carry it.
The advocacy record on this page holds only what a source we opened says happened. Where we searched and found nothing, the page says so rather than leaving a silence. Where a campaign names a filer the source does not name, it says that too. Ratings are ours; the list of subjects is UN Sustainable Development Goals's, and we link to their original.
How we score dependency, in full.