Human Right Issues In Tech Supply Chains

Multi-national supply chains are squarely in the crosshairs of a wide variety of regulators. The California Supply Chains Act can serve as a roadmap of what a company can do to keep tabs on its own supply chain. The California law requires companies to report on what they are doing on a variety of fronts, including use of third parties to evaluate risk of forced labor in supply chains and requiring suppliers themselves to certify their products. In a Today’s General Counsel article, Littler Mendelson attorneys John Kloosterman and Michael Congiu explain how this requirement is widely misunderstood, and in what sense it doesn’t require companies to actually “do” anything – but why it’s good business to do it anyway. They also warn against promising more than you know you can deliver. “Too many well-intentioned companies,” they write, “have agreed to abide by international standards of one type or another without knowing what they were agreeing to, and plaintiffs may be able to use those statements against you.”