What is the Injustice?
The topic introduces a case where there has been breach of human rights in the supply chain. The report will illustrate about the different aspects of the supply chain and identify the area where human rights have been breached, which has caused severe problems. The supply chain responsibilities are to be managed properly for ensuring that the same problem does not occur again and the situation is improved to the utmost level possible.
The case on supply chain responsibilities considered here is the slave labor risk on Brazil coffee plantations and bad working conditions for them within the areas where coffee is produced. Making the people work as slaves and bound to work in bad conditions without proper health and safety measures provided to them have resulted in breaching the human rights (Ferrell and Fraedrich 2015).
What is the injustice?
The injustice here is the breach of human rights due to slave labor risk at the coffee plantations in Brazil along with the bad working conditions, where the people have not been provided with proper health and safety measures. It is evident that the people work at the coffee plantations for a specific purpose, i.e., to generate income and live normally. The coffee plantations are managed by them, from where the coffee beans are delivered to the businesses.
Thus, providing safety and focusing on the improvement of their health is essential not only for successful business management, but also for creating a positive mindset among them that they are being valued. According to the human rights law, there are several employment laws, rules and regulations that are applied to the employers to manage a good workforce where discrimination is prevented and the people working at the coffee plantations are taken care of properly (Crane and Matten 2016).
The biggest coffee businesses including Nestle and Jacobs Douwe Egberts have admitted that the coffee bean from the coffee plantations in Brazil where slave labor is being used has resulted in ending the coffee business. The plantations from where the supplies are made remain unknown, because of which, proper facilities have not been provided and the individuals working at the coffee plantations are unable to get the right services that can manage their health, safety and wellbeing.
The injustice was basically the areas where people have been trafficked to work within bad condition with little or no pay and even without any proper health and safety measures, the absence of which may harm their lives. They were made to work as slaves without any ways to fulfill their basic amenities due to lower pay and bad working conditions (Trevino and Nelson 2016). The people who worked at the coffee plantations in Brazil were forced to stay on rubbish heaps and rather than providing them with clean water to drink, they had been forced to drink water from the nearby water bodies alongside the animals. All these people work at different locations where the coffee plantations have been managed and the coffee beans are supplied to the major coffee businesses for delivering the end products to the customers (DesJardins 2014).
Factors Determining the Injustice
The major problem or injustice is the slavery, which encompasses the violation of human rights related to work exploitation. It includes slavery like conditions and forced to work as labors within little or no pay along with child labor and human trafficking. The majority of trafficking of human beings is for the purpose of exploiting the labor and ensuring that they work under supply chain without considering the working conditions and wages provided to them. The individuals are in slavery when they are forced to work through some kind of emotional or physical threat. The workers at the coffee plantations are controlled and owned by the employer and even treated as commodity, considering the fact they are bought and sold as property.
They even were constrained and need to follow certain restrictions that are placed in the path of their freedom (Bowie 2017). The humans are trafficked and forced to work at the coffee plantations in Brazil against their will or interest under the threat of some kind of punishment. The threats to human rights in the supply chain include forced labor conditions, bonded labor, trafficking of human, restrictions of freedom and right to collective bargaining, little or no pay at all, bad working conditions, discrimination, harsh and inaccurate attitudes shown to the workers and child labor, which is also illegal.
Considering the case here, it is found that the people are mostly affected due to breach of human rights by the supply chain partners and even lack of focus on creating any scopes to identify the issues and finding remedial measures in the coffee plantation areas all over Brazil (Rossouw and Van Vuuren 2017).
Brazil, being one of the largest exporter and supplier of coffee holds more than one third of the global market. Though the production of good quality coffee products and other beverages are based upon the coffee beans extracted and supplied through the supply chain. But the background is entirely different where the workers are mostly responsible for dedicating their hard work at the coffee plantations and ensuring that the best quality coffee beans are supplied to the coffee businesses. The workers face debt bondage and have been subject of negligence, harm, lack of freedom and slavery.
They were even allowed to work extra hours with more or less no pay, exposure to deadly pesticides at the coffee plantations, lack of protective environment, lack of health and safety, no clean water for drinking and even accommodation without doors and mattresses (Weiss 2014). These working conditions breach the laws, rules and regulations and even fail to meet the standards and follow the ethical codes that Nestle and other coffee business require from the suppliers. These two companies account for nearly 40 percent of the global coffee market and the individuals involved in the supply chain are middlemen and exporters.
Therefore, it is clearly proved that the injustice here is the slavery situations where the rights of humans are not managed properly and in few cases, it has been breached as well. Thus, here the breach of human rights for the slavery of people working at the coffee plantations will be analyzed and interpreted for making sure that remedial measures are undertaken to overcome the problematic situations effectively (Pearson 2017).
Stakeholder Analysis
Factors determining the injustice
From the case analysis, it is clearly understood that there are various factors revolving around the slavery of individuals and forcing them to work at the coffee plantations in Brazil. It is a part of the supply chain where the supplies are made based on the coffee plantations and it is seen that the individuals are forced to work without any pay and even not provided with proper accommodation along with lack of health and safety too. The supply chain for coffee often experience major issues and challenges and the production remains fragmented. The coffee plants are present in remote and in developing areas such as in Brazil, due to which, the prices of coffee are vulnerable to fluctuations at different times within the commodity market (Shaw 2016).
The changes in climatic conditions are also considered as other major factors that affect the coffee plantation regions in Brazil. The coffee beans are the red portions of the fruits that are taken from the coffee plants and are later dried, processed and milled. The individuals in the nearby regions are forced to work in these regions and while they mostly do the hard work, the suppliers take the profit and even treat them as slaves without providing them any wages or good working conditions too. Few of the stakeholders include the workers at the coffee plantations in Brazil, coffee processing units, coffee roaster, retailers, green coffee importers, wholesalers, shareholders and the Government (Goodpaster 2015).
The supply chain, if managed properly, will be able to put a stop to the slavery acts and at the same time, benefit the workers and trading partners for yielding a sustainable environment. This would make the workers get the desired wages as well as ensure creation of good working conditions and improve the safety level too. Few other stakeholders are the competitors, customers and suppliers as well. Information from various stakeholders is obtained to understand about their needs and preferences and what could keep them satisfied. This is needed for ensuring that the stakeholders’ demands and expectations are met and the coffee plantations are managed properly (DesJardins and McCall 2014).
According to the International Labor standards, it is necessary to provide the workers with the right wages and good working conditions so that they remain motivated and encouraged to work more committed. The suppliers should be monitored to check whether they abide by the human rights laws, rules and regulations or not and the workers have been treated properly or not as well. The companies like Nestle and other coffee businesses cannot be held much responsible for the slavery cases, because these are the flaws that are present in the supply chain activities, which often create lack of transparency and openness among the stakeholders (Jones, Wicks and Freeman 2017).
Stakeholder analysis
Child labor is a major problem in the global economy and there are many children who are forced to work at the coffee plantations in Brazil. Nestle should put a stop to Child Labor and make sure that the areas from where the supplies are delivered prevent any children below the age of 13 to work. Many of them were found to work under bad conditions and have been even made to sleep on the rubbish heaps and drink water with the animals (Nestle.com 2018). The other workers were exploited physically and mentally tortured and had been exposed to harmful pesticides and fertilizers, which put their lives , health and safety at risks.
Micro, Meso, and Macro Level Analysis
Many of the people suffered from pain, sickness, injury and child labor was considered as hazardous while handling harmful pesticides, fertilizers and other harmful substances. It is important for Nestle and other companies to set laws, rules and regulations to ensure that proper health and safety measures are managed to keep the workers safe and not exposed to any sort of harmful and toxic materials while working at the Coffee plantations (Floyd et al. 2013).
Micro, macro and meso levels
At the micro level, individuals maintain a balance between the various roles and responsibilities of theirs and thus they have higher self esteem and lower depression and inconsistency level. There are several factors though that impact male and female individuals regarding the maintenance of balance in terms of roles. The male individuals are more interested in leisure time with families and friends, while the working hours increased with decrease in role balance (Hathaway 2017).
The macro level includes prioritizing on the laws regulating the slavery, child labor and other unethical practices. It is beneficial for protecting the individuals just like the workers at the coffee plantations who are forced to work all day long with very little or no pay. They were even exposed to harmful pesticides and toxic materials, which deteriorated their health and affected their respiratory system and created skin rashes. At the macro level, the supply chains must be monitored and checked whether the workers are provided with proper support or not and ensure that they are not discriminated. This should increase the level of participation of the workers as well as facilitate the employment scopes and opportunities for people to work at the coffee plantation areas in Brazil (Harris et al. 2014).
At the meso level, it is essential for managing the cross cultural activities properly, furthermore implement the local social systems properly to improve the group level interactions and improve the lives of people working there. There are few Americans who treated the Brazilian workers as slaves and forced them to work overtime and even sometimes all day long, without providing them proper food, clean water, no accommodation facilities and without any wages (Shelton 2015).
Improving the situation
To improve the situation, the first and foremost thing to be done is to prevent purchase of coffee beans directly from the blacklisted coffee plantation areas in Brazil where the breach of human rights has taken place. The slavery like conditions should be looked upon throughout the supply chain and ensure that the right supplies are delivered for the production of good quality coffee and at the same time, manage the human rights properly.
The ethical codes, laws and regulations must be followed to protect the human rights of the workers at the coffee plantations, furthermore ban the suppliers from using child labor and supporting slavery of people (Howard-Hassmann 2018). Based on the guidelines of the organization, it is also important to ensure that the workers at the coffee plantations can gain access to clear drinking water and are provided with a healthy working environment where they will be safe and secure.
Improving the Situation
The top of the chain companies are the popular and established coffee businesses like Nestle and other companies should be responsible in abiding by the laws, rules and regulations to ensure that the workers are treated fairly and with respect. The Modern Slavery Act enables perceiving the forced labor as a major problem while developing countries can realize what is actually happening and the victims of modern slavery at the Brazilian coffee plantations. During the International Labor Conference, new processes are initiated for maintaining a legally binding standard that follows the Government laws, rules and regulations and ensure that the human rights have not been breached (Stephens 2017).
It will not only manage the supply chains properly, but can also adopt clear policies and procedures for respecting the human rights, which are embedded in the business functions for the top coffee businesses. The potential human rights impacts are to be understood along with the prevention of the harmful impacts to set proper labor standards and at the same time, facilitate the promotion of health and safety of workers at the coffee plantations in Brazil. It should also be necessary to enable external communication about how the human rights’ impacts could be addressed along with the management of proper business processes (Risse et al. 2013).
Under the international laws, rules and regulations, Government and other regulatory bodies have various obligations to keep the labor rights protected and even allow the workers to form unions and protest for the wrong doings, due to which, they have suffered. The slavery conditions where the workers are treated badly and even not provided with proper food, accommodation and forced to work without any pay put the spotlight on the poor working conditions and abuse of the human rights in the factories that produce the coffee beans and supply those. New initiatives should be undertaken to maintain good working conditions so that the workers can work with proper safety and make sure that they are paid well in terms of their performances and hours of working at the coffee plantations in Brazil (Hassim, Heywood and Berger 2014).
Ruggie’s innovative approach
The slavery of people at the coffee plantations has enforced the statement or notion that large sized business organizations like Nestle and others have the responsibility to protect the human rights employed within the supply chain (Taka 2016). The use of Ruggie’s innovative approach will benefit the companies in the future and make sure that none of the organizations can be exempted from the requirements needed to conduct the risk based human rights due diligence on the different kinds of business activities. The innovative approach focuses on three major aspects including protect, respect and remedy, which can assist in controlling the relationship between the human rights management and international businesses (Araujo 2015).
This approach facilitates the promotion of various initiatives and guiding principles for identifying the legal issues and assessment the risks associated with the breach f human rights, furthermore become socially responsible too. The Ruggie’s innovative approach could allow the organization to implement various initiatives based on the concept of Corporate Social responsibility in order to adopt the legally binding international norms, rules and regulations. It should allow formation of a human rights activist team, who can abide by the organizational laws, rules and regulations and inform the Government in Brazil to undertake immediate actions against the injustice along with provide necessary support to the coffee plantation workers (Hébrard 2013).
Ruggie’s Due Diligence Framework and Procedural Justice
The framework is designed in such a manner so that it can be accepted by the Human Rights Council and the coffee businesses shall need to adopt those for maintaining a sustainable working environment. The three main principles are the Protect, Respect and Remedy.
Protect- The first principle enables integrating various roles and responsibilities provided to the individuals involved in the supply chain to protect against human rights breach by the third parties. It is managed through the implementation of right policies, procedures, rules and adjudication, which will prevent he slavery acts in Brazil as well as ensure that they are provided with proper health and security (Monczka et al. 2015).
The workers were treated as slaves and had been the subject of harm because they were not provided with the right wages, working conditions and forced to sleep in rubbish without any access to clean drinking water too. The businesses should prioritize on supporting the workers to reduce the usage of water in agricultural areas and raise awareness related to conservation of water. This would not only save a huge amount of water, but would also make the workers gain access to clean and drinking water with ease and effectiveness (Okyere 2013).
Respect- The corporate social responsibilities of Nestle include improving the nutrition awareness among people within the various communities, supporting the rural development of the workers in the coffee plantations and improving the livelihood of people and enhancing their health and wellbeing. The CRS strategies are to be implemented by the coffee businesses for the purpose of respecting the human rights and act with due diligence to prevent breach of human rights, furthermore prevent the adverse effects on the workers at the coffee plantations in Brazil (Lienert, Schnetzer and Ingold 2013).
Remedy- The state Government and businesses do hold the responsibility to access the areas where the workers are forced to work as slaves without any pay and even identify the child laborers to provide effective remedial measures, both in terms of judicial and non-judicial aspects. The businesses must also give punishment to the individuals within the supply chain who are found responsible for committing the slavery acts and stop the slavery of people at the coffee plantations in Brazil. It is also necessary to support educational initiatives and even focus on the prevention of child labor in Brazil (Ruggie and Nelson 2015).
The two companies need to conduct an assessment of the areas where the slavery acts are experienced and then monitor the activities at first. This should be done by an investigation team specially formed to stop slavery of people working at the coffee plantations in Brazil. The companies should implement various ethical codes and practices to protect the human rights and ban the suppliers who are responsible for forcing people to work and even supported the child labor. Based on the guidelines of Nestle, it would also be easy to manage availability of drinking water for the workers and create a healthy working environment for them. All these activities should be achieved within time duration of 30 days (Nestle.com 2018).
Critical Discussion of Improvement Action
According to Nestle,
“We do not tolerate violations of labor rights and have strongly maintained that forced labor has no place in our supply chain. Unfortunately, forced labor is an endemic problem in Brazil and no company sourcing coffee and other ingredients from the country can fully guarantee that it has completely removed forced labor practices or human rights abuses from its supply chain.”
Conclusion
From the topic, it clearly showed that the companies were committed to working with the Government and regulatory bodies, farmer cooperatives and even interacts with the entire supply chain of coffee. It was necessary not only for improving the working conditions, but also for ensuring that the workers were provided with proper help, support and are taken care of, because they had been the ones who were responsible for managing the coffee plantations and delivering the coffee beans to the industries for the manufacturing and production of good quality coffee.
The companies supported various programs and educational initiatives to put a stop to slavery and child labor, furthermore promoted educational awareness among people to make them access clean drinking water and provide good accommodation facilities too. There are businesses like Nestle, Jacobs, Illy and Starbucks that also source the coffee beans from Brazil and monitored the suppliers who were termed as blacklisted within the coffee plantations.
Reference list
Araujo, A.L. ed., 2015. African heritage and memories of slavery in Brazil and the South Atlantic world. Cambria Press.
Bowie, N.E., 2017. Business ethics: A Kantian perspective. Cambridge University Press.
Crane, A. and Matten, D., 2016. Business ethics: Managing corporate citizenship and sustainability in the age of globalization. Oxford University Press.
DesJardins, J.R. and McCall, J.J., 2014. Contemporary issues in business ethics. Cengage Learning.
DesJardins, J.R., 2014. An introduction to business ethics. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
Ferrell, O.C. and Fraedrich, J., 2015. Business ethics: Ethical decision making & cases. Nelson Education.
Floyd, L.A., Xu, F., Atkins, R. and Caldwell, C., 2013. Ethical outcomes and business ethics: Toward improving business ethics education. Journal of business ethics, 117(4), pp.753-776.
Goodpaster, K.E., 2015. Business ethics. Wiley Encyclopedia of Management, pp.1-6.
Harris, D., O’Boyle, M., Bates, E. and Buckley, C., 2014. Harris, O’Boyle & Warbrick: Law of the European convention on human rights. Oxford University Press, USA.
Hassim, A., Heywood, M. and Berger, J., 2014. Health and democracy: a guide to human rights, health law and policy in post-apartheid South Africa.
Hathaway, O.A., 2017. Do human rights treaties make a difference?. In International Law and Society (pp. 3-110). Routledge.
Hébrard, J.M., 2013. Slavery in Brazil: Brazilian Scholars in the Key Interpretive Debates. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Publishing, University of Michigan Library.
Howard-Hassmann, R.E., 2018. Human rights and the search for community.
Jones, T.M., Wicks, A.C. and Freeman, R.E., 2017. Stakeholder theory: The state of the art. The Blackwell guide to business ethics, pp.17-37.
Lienert, J., Schnetzer, F. and Ingold, K., 2013. Stakeholder analysis combined with social network analysis provides fine-grained insights into water infrastructure planning processes. Journal of environmental management, 125, pp.134-148.
Monczka, R.M., Handfield, R.B., Giunipero, L.C. and Patterson, J.L., 2015. Purchasing and supply chain management. Cengage Learning.
Okyere, S., 2013. Are working children’s rights and child labour abolition complementary or opposing realms?. International Social Work, 56(1), pp.80-91.
Pearson, R., 2017. Business ethics as communication ethics: Public relations practice and the idea of dialogue. In Public relations theory (pp. 111-131). Routledge.
Risse, T., Risse-Kappen, T., Ropp, S.C. and Sikkink, K. eds., 2013. The persistent power of human rights: From commitment to compliance (Vol. 126). Cambridge University Press.
Rossouw, D. and Van Vuuren, L., 2017. Business ethics. Oxford University Press.
Ruggie, J.G. and Nelson, T., 2015. Human Rights and the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises: Normative Innovations and Implementations Challenges. Brown J. World Aff., 22, p.99.
Shaw, W.H., 2016. Business ethics: A textbook with cases. Nelson Education.
Shelton, D., 2015. Remedies in international human rights law. Oxford University Press, USA.
Stephens, B., 2017. The amorality of profit: transnational corporations and human rights. In Human rights and corporations (pp. 21-66).
Taka, M., 2016. Emerging Practice in Responsible Supply Chain Management: Closed?Pipe Supply C hain of Conflict?Free Minerals from the D emocratic R epublic of C ongo. Business and Society Review, 121(1), pp.37-57.
Trevino, L.K. and Nelson, K.A., 2016. Managing business ethics: Straight talk about how to do it right. John Wiley & Sons.
Weiss, J.W., 2014. Business ethics: A stakeholder and issues management approach. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
