Tackling Modern Slavery in Malaysian Medical Gloves Factories Using a Whole-Systems Approach to the Supply Chain

该项目将确定和实施机制，以防止和纠正马来西亚医疗手套行业招聘和雇用工人方面的现代奴役现象，在新冠肺炎疫情期间，马来西亚对手套的需求增加了一倍多，而侵犯工人权利的地方性行为要么继续存在，要么变得更加严重。2019年，马来西亚是全球三分之二手套供应量的来源地，也是英国国家医疗服务体系(NHS)手套的主要来源。自疫情开始以来，英格兰已提供了超过18亿只手套用于医疗和社会护理。制造业依赖手套厂的外来劳工，最近的媒体报道突出了现代奴隶制的状况，包括支付导致债务束缚的高额招聘费、没收护照以及限制行动或结社。英国NHS供应链是世界上最大的手套采购商，负责在英格兰和威尔士采购高达80%的医疗商品。英国政府最近在2020年3月发表的《现代奴隶制声明》中承诺在手套行业开展试点工作，随着手套生产面临越来越大的压力，这意味着现在是时候进行分析，确定英国和国际供应链可以利用哪些变化，并了解这种变化的驱动因素和障碍。这项研究将采用全系统的方法来了解大流行期间影响马来西亚手套行业工人和现代奴隶制的结构和过程。通过与供应链各级参与者(工人、工厂管理层、供应商、采购商和政策制定者)的访谈，我们的目标是确定变革的途径，并在整个供应链中传达这些途径，以便例如使采购政策能够对全球供应链问题的现实敏感，包括提供适当的后勤支持、商业和合同条款、定价以实现所需的变革，并纳入机制以实现真正和持续的工人发言权和代表权。我们理解和解决马来西亚医疗手套工厂现代奴隶制的方法包括使用整个供应链方法，以避免个别子系统得到优化但整个供应链仍处于次优状态的情况。通过利益相关者参与研讨会、报告和政策简报，该项目将产生政策影响和变化，重点关注英国在英国和马来西亚的采购和供应链组织，并将在英国的采购治理和做法与马来西亚供应链上游发生的劳动力剥削之间建立联系。最重要的是，它将支持马来西亚手套部门现代奴隶制受害者和幸存者取得的可证明的成果，包括教育和招聘费的偿还，并将为政策制定者和NHS的采购提出关于激励和实施改进的建议。该项目将由一个已经站在提高认识和解决手套供应链中这些问题的前沿的跨学科小组执行，以确保迅速和可持续的积极成果。

This project will identify and implement mechanisms to prevent and remediate modern slavery in the recruitment and employment of workers in the medical gloves sector in Malaysia, where demand for gloves has more than doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic, whilst endemic abuse of worker rights has either continued or become worse. In 2019 Malaysia was the source of two-thirds of gloves supplied to the world by volume, and also the main source of gloves to the UK's National Health Service (NHS). Over 1.8 billion gloves have been provided for use in health and social care in England since the start of the pandemic. Manufacturing is reliant on migrant labour in glove factories, where recent media reports highlight conditions of modern slavery, including payment of high recruitment fees leading to debt bondage, confiscation of passports, and restrictions on movement or association. The UK NHS Supply Chain is the single largest purchaser of gloves in the world, responsible for procuring up to 80% of medical goods in England and Wales. The recent UK Government Modern Slavery Statement in March 2020 included a commitment to pilot work in the gloves sector which, along with increasing pressure on the production of gloves, means it is timely to pick up analysis and identify where in UK and international supply chains change can be leveraged, and understand the drivers and barriers to such change.The research will employ a whole-systems approach to understand structures and processes affecting workers and modern slavery in the Malaysian gloves sector during the pandemic. Through interviews with actors at all tiers in the supply chain (workers, factory management, suppliers, purchasers, and policy makers), we aim to identify pathways of change and communicate these throughout the supply chain so that, for example, procurement policy can be made sensitive to the realities of global supply chain issues, including providing appropriate logistical support, commercial and contractual terms, and pricing to enable the changes needed, and incorporating mechanisms to enable real and sustained worker voice and representation. Our approach to understanding and tackling modern slavery in Malaysian medical gloves factories involves the use of a whole supply chain approach to avoid a situation where individual subsystems are optimised but the whole supply chain remains sub-optimal.Through stakeholder engagement workshops, reports and policy briefs, the project will generate policy influence and change focused on UK procurement and supply chain organisations in the UK and Malaysia and will build the connection between procurement governance and practices in the UK and the occurrence of labour exploitation at the upstream end of the supply chain in Malaysia. Most importantly, it will support demonstrable outcomes for the victims and survivors of modern slavery in the Malaysian gloves sector, including education and the reimbursement of recruitment fees, and will produce recommendations for policy-makers and NHS procurement on incentivising and implementing improvement. The project will be executed by an interdisciplinary team already at the forefront of raising awareness and tackling these issues in the gloves supply chain, in order to ensure swift and sustainable positive outcomes.