There is yet another area of concern and probe that is fast catching up the Corporate Social Responsibility; in fact, it is overtaking CSR. This is clear from California Transparency in Supply Chain Act, as will be operative from 1 January 2012. This Act when in force would add another dimension to the accountability of large retailers and manufacturers trading with the US state of California. This will require large retailers and manufacturers doing business in the US state to disclose their efforts to eradicate slavery and human trafficking from their product supply chains. Companies impacted by the legislation will include apparel and footwear retailers and manufacturers with annual worldwide gross receipts of more than US$100m - who must make the required disclosures on the home page of their corporate websites.

An estimated 3,200 companies worldwide will be affected by the new law, which must address five areas: third-party supply chain verification, independent and unannounced supplier audits, supplier certification of legal compliance, internal accountability standards, and staff training on forced labour and human trafficking. "The California law will have a wide reach," trade expert Brenda Jacobs, an attorney at Sidley Austin LLP, told.

Why Supply Chain Transparency Act?

Textile and apparel trade union leaders and struggling workers - especially poor migrants - in key exporting nations were among last year's victims of killings, beatings, arrests and dismissals, a global survey said recently.

"Around the world, workers trying to claim basic rights to decent work in many countries are being met with sackings, violence and in extreme cases murder by governments, employers and businesses," said Sharan Burrows, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). The largest number of killings of apparel unionists (6), and breaches of their core labour rights, took place in Bangladesh, said the ITUC's annual survey of violations of trade union rights in the world. It also highlights that protests at garment factories in Bangladesh over minimum wage demands were widespread throughout the year, and were met with police brutality, with hundreds injured in the clashes. Stephen Benedict, ITUC Director of Human and Trade Union Rights, said the group has recently written to authorities in Bangladesh expressing its growing concerns over continued abuses of apparel workers and demonstrators.

Similarly the survey, carried out in 143 countries, documents that in Pakistan, Mustansar Randhawa, the founder of the Labour Quami Movement for loom workers, was shot dead in his office. And in Cambodia, Ath Thorn, President of the country's apparel union CCAWDU, received death threats last August before nationwide strikes were held. Moreover, hundreds of textile migrant workers from South Asia, with vast majority of women, were stripped of their passports and subjected to conditions amounting to slavery in an apparel plant in Jordan, with two reportedly "overworked to death." 90 trade unionists were murdered worldwide in 2012, including 49 in Colombia. In addition, 75 received death threats, at least 2,500 were arrested and 5,000 sacked because of union activities, said the ITUC.