Verité’s Director of Business Development, Declan Croucher, will join the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics (SCCE) to lead a webinar on Complying with the Executive Order Against Trafficking in Federal Contracts.
Last month, the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) announced, as part of its commitment to eradicating forced labor, the results of a special out-of-cycle membership vote amending version 5.0 of the EICC Code of Conduct to further protect workers by prohibiting all recruitment fees.
In previous Vision pieces, we have pointed out that Executive Order 13627 on “Strengthening Protections against Trafficking in Persons in Federal Contracts” is designed to bolster the U.S. government’s zero-tolerance approach to trafficking in persons in federal contracts. On January 29, 2015, the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulation) Council released the much awaited “final rule” designed to implement the Executive Order signed by President Obama in September 2012, and Title XVII of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2013 (“Ending Trafficking in Government Contracting”)—both of which will require federal contractors and subcontractors to take specific proactive preventive measures to detect and eliminate human trafficking and forced labor in their supply chains.
At a special session today of the Clinton Global Initiative Annual Meeting, President Obama announced several new Administration policies to fight human trafficking. One of these, an Executive Order Strengthening Protections in Federal Contracts, ensures that goods purchased by the U.S. Government—the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world—are not tainted by trafficking via exploitative labor recruitment practices at any point in the production and supply chain. The Executive Order will apply to all federal contractors and subcontractors—both in the US and worldwide—and provides federal agencies with additional tools to foster compliance.