Learning from Lululemon: If Canada wants to get serious about forced labour, disclosure laws won’t do

The Canadian government recently passed the Fighting Against Forced Labour and Child Labour in Supply Chains Act. The new law is designed to address forced labour and child labour in supply chains by requiring companies to disclose their efforts in eliminating labour abuse from their supply chains.

The new law falls short of what is required to make large corporations exercise due diligence to prevent labour abuse from occurring within their supply chains. Remarkably, only one Canadian garment company — Loblaw Companies Ltd., the parent company of the Joe Fresh brand — has signed the accord. Other Canadian companies prefer their own voluntary initiatives.

Despite being recognized as an industry leader in this area, an investigation by researchers at Sheffield Hallam University in England found that Lululemon was at a high risk of sourcing from the Xinjiang region in China — which has been associated with forced labour and human rights abuses — that same year.

Two reports found that from 2018 to 2019, workers at a Lululemon supplier factory had to work two to three nights without being allowed to go home or take necessary breaks. Corporate transparency issues Lululemon has several codes and policies in place to address forced labour. One is the Lululemon Global Code of Business Conduct and Ethics, which states that employees and vendors are to adhere to labour and employment standards in the countries they operate in, unless the code sets a higher standard.

While Lululemon can conduct unannounced visits to monitor their compliance with the Vendor Code of Ethics, this is rarely done. Only one per cent of assessments in 2019 were unannounced. Lululemon also works with third-party auditors sometimes, which can be problematic since these auditors rely on their clients to stay in business, raising questions about the authenticity of auditing reports.

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