industryterm:supply chain

  • ’I had pain all over my body’: Italy’s tainted tobacco industry

    Three of the world’s largest tobacco manufacturers, #Philip_Morris, #British_American_Tobacco and #Imperial_Brands, are buying leaves that could have been picked by exploited African migrants working in Italy’s multi-million euro industry.

    Workers including children, said they were forced to work up to 12 hours a day without contracts or sufficient health and safety equipment in Campania, a region that produces more than a third of Italy’s tobacco. Some workers said they were paid about three euros an hour.

    The Guardian investigation into Italy’s tobacco industry, which spanned three years, is believed to be the first in Europe to examine the supply chain.

    Italy’s tobacco market is dominated by the three multinational manufacturers, all of whom buy from local producers. According to an internal report by the farmers’ organisation ONT Italia, seen by the Guardian and confirmed by a document from the European Leaf Tobacco Interbranch, the companies bought three-fifths of Italian tobacco in 2017. Philip Morris alone purchased 21,000 tons of the 50,000 tons harvested that year.

    The multinationals all said they buy from suppliers who operate under a strict code of conduct to ensure fair treatment of workers. Philip Morris said it had not come across any abuse. Imperial and British American said they would investigate any complaints brought to their attention.

    Italy is the EU’s leading tobacco producer. In 2017, the industry was worth €149m (£131m).

    Despite there being a complex system of guarantees and safeguards in place for tobacco workers, more than 20 asylum seekers who spoke to the Guardian, including 10 who had worked in the tobacco fields during the 2018 season, reported rights violations and a lack of safety equipment.

    The interviewees said they had no employment contracts, were paid wages below legal standards, and had to work up to 12 work hours a day. They also said they had no access to clean water, and suffered verbal abuse and racial discrimination from bosses. Two interviewees were underage and employed in hazardous work.

    Didier, born and raised in Ivory Coast, arrived in Italy via Libya. He recently turned 18, but was 17 when, last spring, a tobacco grower in Capua Vetere, near the city of Caserta, offered him work in his fields. “I woke up at 4am. We started at 6am,” he said. “The work was exhausting. It was really hot inside the greenhouse and we had no contracts.”

    Alex, from Ghana, another minor who worked in the same area, said he was forced to work 10 to 12 hours a day. “If you are tired or not, you are supposed to work”, otherwise “you lose your job”.

    Workers complained of having to work without a break until lunchtime.

    Alex said he wasn’t given gloves or work clothes to protect him from the nicotine contained in the leaves, or from pesticides. He also said that when he worked without gloves he felt “some sickness like fever, like malaria, or headaches”.

    Moisture on a tobacco leaf from dew or rain may contain as much nicotine as the content of six cigarettes, one study found. Direct contact can lead to nicotine poisoning.

    Most of the migrants said they had worked without gloves. Low wages prevented them from buying their own.

    At the end of the working day, said Sekou, 27, from Guinea, who has worked in the tobacco fields since 2016: “I could not get my hands in the water to take a shower because my hands were cut”.

    Olivier added: “I had pain all over my body, especially on my hands. I had to take painkillers every day.”

    The migrants said they were usually hired on roundabouts along the main roads through Caserta province.

    Workers who spoke to the Guardian said they didn’t have contracts and were paid half the minimum wage. Most earned between €20 and €30 a day, rather than the minimum of €42.

    Thomas, from Ghana, said: “I worked last year in the tobacco fields near Cancello, a village near Caserta. They paid me €3 per hour. The work was terrible and we had no contracts”.

    The Guardian found African workers who were paid €3 an hour, while Albanians, Romanians or Italians, were paid almost double.

    “I worked with Albanians. They paid the Albanians €50 a day,” (€5 an hour), says Didier. “They paid me €3 per hour. That’s why I asked them for a raise. But when I did, they never called back.”

    Tammaro Della Corte, leader of the General Confederation of Italian Workers labour union in Caserta, said: “Unfortunately, the reality of the work conditions in the agricultural sector in the province of Caserta, including the tobacco industry, is marked by a deep labour exploitation, low wages, illegal contracts and an impressive presence of the caporalato [illegal hiring], including extortion and blackmailing of the workers.

    “We speak to thousands of workers who work in extreme conditions, the majority of whom are immigrants from eastern Europe, north Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. A large part of the entire supply chain of the tobacco sector is marked by extreme and alarming working conditions.”

    Between 405,000 and 500,000 migrants work in Italy’s agricultural sector, about half the total workforce. According to the Placido Rizzotto Observatory, which investigates worker conditions in the agricultural sector, 80% of those working without contracts are migrants.

    Multinational tobacco companies have invested billions of euros in the industry in Italy. Philip Morris alone has invested €1bn over the past five years and has investment plans on the same scale for the next two years. In 2016, the company invested €500m to open a factory near Bologna to manufacture smokeless cigarettes. A year later, another €500m investment was announced to expand production capacity at the factory.

    British American Tobacco declared investments in Italy of €1bn between 2015 and 2019.

    Companies have signed agreements with the agriculture ministry and farmers’ associations.

    Since 2011, Philip Morris, which buys the majority of tobacco in Campania, has signed agreements to purchase tobacco directly from ONT Italia.

    Philip Morris buys roughly 70% of the Burley tobacco variety produced in Campania. Approximately 900 farmers work for companies who supply to Philip Morris.

    In 2018, Burley and Virginia Bright varieties constituted 90% of Italian tobacco production. About 15,000 tons of the 16,000 tons of Italian Burley are harvested in Campania.

    In 2015, Philip Morris signed a deal with Coldiretti, the main association of entrepreneurs in the agricultural sector, to buy 21,000 tons of tobacco a year from Italian farmers, by investing €500m, until 2020.

    Gennarino Masiello, president of Coldiretti Campania and national vice-president, said the deal included a “strong commitment to respect the rights of employees, banning phenomena like caporalato and child labour”.

    Steps have been taken to improve workers’ conditions in the tobacco industry.

    A deal agreed last year between the Organizzazione Interprofessionale Tabacco Italia (OITI), a farmers’ organisation, and the ministry of agriculture resulted in the introduction of a code of practice in the tobacco industry, including protecting the health of workers, and a national strategy to reduce the environmental impact.

    But last year, the OITI was forced to acknowledge that “workplace abuses often have systemic causes” and that “long-term solutions to address these issues require the serious and lasting commitment of all the players in the supply chain, together with that of the government and other parties involved”.

    Despite the code, the migrants interviewed reported no change in their working conditions.

    In 2017, Philip Morris signed an agreement with the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) to hire 20 migrants as trainees within the Campania tobacco producing companies, to “support their exit from situations of serious exploitation”. Migrants on the six-month trainee scheme receive a monthly salary of €600 from Philip Morris.

    But the scheme appears to have little impact.

    Kofi, Sekou and Hassan were among 20 migrants hired under the agreement. Two of them said their duties and treatment were no different from other workers. At the end of the six months, Sekou said he was not hired regularly, but continued to work with no contract and low wages, in the same company that signed the agreement with Philip Morris.

    “If I didn’t go to work they wouldn’t pay me. I was sick, they wouldn’t pay me,” he said.

    In a statement, Huub Savelkouls, chief sustainability officer at Philip Morris International, said the company is committed to ensuring safety and fair conditions in its supply chain and had not come across the issues raised.

    “Working with the independent, not-for-profit organisation, Verité, we developed PMI’s Agricultural Labor Practices (ALP) code that currently reaches more than 350,000 farms worldwide. Farmers supplying PMI in Italy are contractually bound to respect the standards of the ALP code. They receive training and field teams conduct farm visits twice a month to monitor adherence to the ALP code,” he said.

    “Recognising the complex situation with migrant workers in Italian agriculture, PMI has taken supplementary steps to gain more visibility and prevent potential issues through a mechanism that provides direct channels for workers to raise concerns, specifically funding an independent helpline and direct engagement programme with farm workers.”

    On the IOM scheme, he said: “This work has been recognised by stakeholders and elements are being considered for continued action.”

    Simon Cleverly, group head of corporate affairs at British American Tobacco, said: “We recognise that agricultural supply chains and global business operations, by their nature, can present significant rights risks and we have robust policies and process in place to ensure these risks are minimised. Our supplier code of conduct sets out the minimum contractual standards we expect of all our suppliers worldwide, and specifically requires suppliers to ensure that their operations are free from unlawful migrant labour. This code also requires suppliers to provide all workers, including legal migrant workers, with fair wages and benefits, which comply with applicable minimum wage legislation. To support compliance, we have due diligence in place for all our third-party suppliers, including the industry-wide sustainable tobacco programme (STP).”

    He added: “Where we are made aware of alleged human rights abuses, via STP, our whistleblowing procedure or by any other channel, we investigate and where needed, take remedial action.”

    Simon Evans, group media relations manager at Imperial Tobacco, said: “Through the industry-wide sustainable tobacco programme we work with all of our tobacco suppliers to address good agricultural practices, improve labour practices and protect the environment. We purchase a very small amount of tobacco from the Campania region via a local third party supplier, with whom we are working to understand and resolve any issues.”

    ONT said technicians visited tobacco producers at least once a month to monitor compliance with contract and production regulations. It said it would not tolerate any kind of labour exploitation and would follow up the Guardian investigation.

    “If they [the abuses] happen to be attributable to farms associated with ONT, we will take the necessary measures, not only for the violation of the law, but above all to protect all our members who operate with total honesty and transparency.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/may/31/i-had-pain-all-over-my-body-italys-tainted-tobacco-industry?CMP=share_b
    #tabac #industrie_du_tabac #exploitation #travail #migrations #Caserta #Italie #néo-esclavagisme #Pouilles #Campania

    ping @albertocampiphoto @marty @reka @isskein

  • How #blockchain Can Improve Life in #cities and Reduce the Cost of Deliveries
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-improve-cities-reduce-cost-deliveries-ecommerce-f66c50be29e5?

    Geeba plans to use blockchain technology to improve the speed of e-commerce deliveries and ease the burden on urban infrastructures.Urban delivery is expensive due to outdated technologies and a lack of flexibility in the supply chainBlockchain technology is often touted as a world-historic shift in how we organize information, conduct economic transactions, and even our political structures. Yet, blockchain also has many less dramatic applications that fall short of fundamental social transformation. These practical applications still make a positive contribution to the social good.“Last-Mile” DeliveryMany sectors of the traditional economy have segments in which blockchain technology could be hugely helpful in increasing efficiency, reducing waste, and easing pressure on urban (...)

    #ecommerce #business #startup

  • #blockchain : Disruptions And Opportunities
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-disruptions-and-opportunities-cf97e16ca95f?source=rss----3a81

    There has been a resounding expectation by a lot of experts in the crypto community about the opportunities and gains that blockchain adoption could yield in the near future. In this post, we are going to take a look at what has changed so far in industries that have adopted it.Although it has disrupted nearly all major industries, there are five of them where this process was the most successful by this date. These are supply chain management, healthcare, banking, voting systems, and cybersecurity.Supply Chain ManagementSupply chain management for retail, logistics, and e-tail sectors has always appeared to be a more likely candidate for blockchain #disruption from the get-go. This could be because of the many parties that are involved in the chain of supply — manufacturer, exporter, (...)

    #blockchain-opportunities #infographics #blockchain-technology

  • The Software That Shapes Workers’ Lives | The New Yorker
    https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-software-that-shapes-workers-lives

    How could I know which had been made ethically and which hadn’t?

    Answering this question can be surprisingly difficult. A few years ago, while teaching a class about global labor at the University of California, Los Angeles, I tried assigning my students the task of analyzing the “supply chain”—the vast network of factories, warehouses, and shipping conduits through which products flow—by tracing the components used in their electronic devices. Almost immediately, I hit a snag: it turns out that even companies that boast about “end-to-end visibility” and “supply-chain transparency” may not know exactly where their components come from. This ignorance is built into the way supply chains work. The housing of a television, say, might be built in a small factory employing only a few people; that factory interacts only with the suppliers and buyers immediately adjacent to it in the chain—a plastic supplier on one side, an assembly company on the other. This arrangement encourages modularity, since, if a company goes out of business, its immediate partners can replace it without consulting anyone. But it also makes it hard to identify individual links in the chain. The resilient, self-healing quality of supply chains derives, in part, from the fact that they are unsupervised.

    When people try to picture supply chains, they often focus on their physical infrastructure. In Allan Sekula’s book “Fish Story,” a volume of essays and photographs produced between 1989 and 1995, the writer and photographer trains his lens on ports, harbors, and the workers who pilot ships between them; he reveals dim shipboard workspaces and otherworldly industrial zones. In “The Forgotten Space,” a documentary that Sekula made with the film theorist Noël Burch, in 2010, we see massive, gliding vessels, enormous machines, and people rummaging through the detritus around ports and harbors. Sekula’s work suggests the degree to which our fantasy of friction-free procurement hides the real, often gruelling, work of global shipping and trade.

    But supply chains aren’t purely physical. They’re also made of information. Modern supply-chain management, or S.C.M., is done through software. The people who design and coördinate supply chains don’t see warehouses or workers. They stare at screens filled with icons and tables. Their view of the supply chain is abstract. It may be the one that matters most.

    Most of the time, the work of supply-chain management is divided up, with handoffs where one specialist passes a package of data to another. No individual is liable to possess a detailed picture of the whole supply chain. Instead, each S.C.M. specialist knows only what her neighbors need.

    In such a system, a sense of inevitability takes hold. Data dictates a set of conditions which must be met, but there is no explanation of how that data was derived; meanwhile, the software takes an active role, tweaking the plan to meet the conditions as efficiently as possible. sap’s built-in optimizers work out how to meet production needs with the least “latency” and at the lowest possible costs. (The software even suggests how tightly a container should be packed, to save on shipping charges.) This entails that particular components become available at particular times. The consequences of this relentless optimization are well-documented. The corporations that commission products pass their computationally determined demands on to their subcontractors, who then put extraordinary pressure on their employees. Thus, China Labor Watch found that workers in Heyuan City, China, tasked with producing Disney’s Princess Sing & Sparkle Ariel Bath Doll—retail price today, $26.40—work twenty-six days a month, assembling between eighteen hundred and twenty-five hundred dolls per day, and earning one cent for each doll they complete.

    Still, from a worker’s point of view, S.C.M. software can generate its own bullwhip effect. At the beginning of the planning process, product requirements are fairly high-level. But by the time these requirements reach workers, they have become more exacting, more punishing. Small reductions in “latency,” for instance, can magnify in consequence, reducing a worker’s time for eating her lunch, taking a breath, donning safety equipment, or seeing a loved one.

    Could S.C.M. software include a “workers’-rights” component—a counterpart to PP/DS, incorporating data on working conditions? Technically, it’s possible. sap could begin asking for input about worker welfare. But a component like that would be at cross-purposes with almost every other function of the system. On some level, it might even undermine the purpose of having a system in the first place. Supply chains create efficiency in part through the distribution of responsibility. If a supervisor at a toy factory objects to the production plan she’s received, her boss can wield, in his defense, a PP/DS plan sent to him by someone else, who worked with data produced by yet another person. It will turn out that no one in particular is responsible for the pressures placed on the factory. They flow from the system—a system designed to be flexible in some ways and rigid in others.

    #Algorithmes #SAP #Droit_travail #Industrie_influence

  • #blockchain, Human Rights, and the Supply Chain
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-human-rights-and-the-supply-chain-e58578adf267?source=rss----

    By: Laura Marissa CullellSenior Blockchain ConsultantHow much do you know about the products you use or buy on a regular basis? Or where your cell phone parts come from? What about the people who made them? Or What materials were used and wasted?The journey of a product is long and vast, and goes through several distributors, third parties, storage facilities, suppliers that handle anything from design, to sales, and productions. A product passes through so many different stages, and hands before making it onto store shelves. It’s incredibly difficult to truly track all of it properly, especially when corporate interests are at stake.This article will look at the current landscape of the supply chain and explore the benefits of blockchain technology. We will see how the benefits of (...)

    #blockchain-technology #sdgs #human-rights #supply-chain

  • OpenText: Convergence of #blockchain, #iot & AI will lay out the path for supply chain autonomy
    https://hackernoon.com/opentext-convergence-of-blockchain-iot-ai-will-lay-out-the-path-for-supp

    Author: HuixianThere is a big loophole in the current state of supply chain management — the infrastructure is fragmented into offline and online components. As a result, this has led to misplacement of product and mismanagement of inventory; the supply chain management system is neither a single entity nor transparent.There are various nodes in the supply chain:Sources of the raw materialsMaterials in processFinished goodsDistribution network to deliver the finished goodsOut of these four primary nodes, the supply chain passes through millions of people along the way from harvesting the resource, distribution of the products and shelving the products for sales. When there are defects in a product, it becomes difficult for the manufacturer to trace the root of the problem. Another issue (...)

    #supply-chain #supply-chain-autonomy #artificial-intelligence

  • #blockchain In Supply Chain — Every Story Needs a Hero
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-in-supply-chain-every-story-needs-a-hero-ac858ff02ca3?source=

    Blockchain In Supply Chain — Every Story Needs a HeroWhen the average person thinks of supply chain and logistics, they think complex work flows of operations that propel a product or service from point A to point B. When the average person thinks of blockchain, well, they really have no clue what to think other than Bitcoin or Ethereum. Anyone who has even the slightest inclination of what these two entails will ask, “How does blockchain fit in the picture and how does it improve supply chain?”. Before we can dive into answering these questions, we will cover 1. What makes efficient supply chain management, and 2. Describing what blockchain is and it’s benefactors.Supply-less Solutions Need Hero’s — Efficient Supply Chain Management.Everything Matters, and that’s ImportantAnyone involved in the (...)

    #transportation #blockchain-supply-chain #automation #supply-chain

  • French Automaker Unveils Plan to Construct Sailing Vehicle Carriers – gCaptain
    https://gcaptain.com/french-automaker-unveils-plan-to-construct-sailing-vehicle-carriers


    Photo: Renault Group

    French automaker Renault has unveiled an ambitious plan to construct two wind-powered roll-on/roll-off vessels by as early as 2020.

    For the project, Renault has partnered with the French start-up Neoline, which was founded in 2015 with the goal of becoming the world’s first shipowner specializing in sailing cargo ships.

    According to a press release, Renault and Neoline will first develop a 136-meter vessel and 4,200 square meters of sail area to serve as a model. The end goal, however, is to build two sail-powered ships by 2020-2021 to service a pilot route joining Saint-Nazaire, the U.S. Eastern seaboard and Saint-Pierre & Miquelon off the coast of Newfoundland.

    Renault says the project is part its environmental strategy aimed at reducing its carbon footprint by 25% between 2010-2022, with a 6% target for its supply chain compared to 2016 levels.


    Photo: Renault Group

  • How #technology is revolutionizing the #cannabis market
    https://hackernoon.com/how-technology-is-revolutionizing-the-cannabis-market-2dc04c15d965?sourc

    (Source)There is a growing demand for cannabis in North America and growers are struggling to keep up. Those in the retailing business in Alberta, Canada are already having trouble keeping up and it has only been days since the legalization of recreational #marijuana. Those in the U.S. are not facing the same problem yet but if the Senate makes progress towards amending the federal law on cannabis substances, then growers and retailers will be put on the same spot.Since the industry is going through massive changes, technological advancements are beginning to play an important role in the daily operations of growers and retailers. Technology is being used for an array of purposes including supply chain management, e-commerce guidance and even artificial intelligence in the production (...)

    #innovation #emerging-technology

  • Inside Italy’s Shadow Economy

    #Home_work — working from home or a small workshop as opposed to in a factory — is a cornerstone of the #fast-fashion supply chain. It is particularly prevalent in countries such as India, Bangladesh, Vietnam and China, where millions of low-paid and predominantly female home workers are some of the most unprotected in the industry, because of their irregular employment status, isolation and lack of legal recourse.

    That similar conditions exist in Italy, however, and facilitate the production of some of the most expensive wardrobe items money can buy, may shock those who see the “Made in Italy” label as a byword for sophisticated craftsmanship.

    Increased pressure from #globalization and growing competition at all levels of the market mean that the assumption implicit in the luxury promise — that part of the value of such a good is that it is made in the best conditions, by highly skilled workers, who are paid fairly — is at times put under threat.

    Though they are not exposed to what most people would consider sweatshop conditions, the homeworkers are allotted what might seem close to sweatshop wages. Italy does not have a national minimum wage, but roughly €5-7 per hour is considered an appropriate standard by many unions and consulting firms. In extremely rare cases, a highly skilled worker can earn as much as €8-10 an hour. But the homeworkers earn significantly less, regardless of whether they are involved in leatherwork, embroidery or another artisanal task.

    In #Ginosa, another town in Puglia, Maria Colamita, 53, said that a decade ago, when her two children were younger, she had worked from home on wedding dresses produced by local factories, embroidering gowns with pearl paillettes and appliqués for €1.50 to €2 per hour.

    Each gown took 10 to 50 hours to complete, and Ms. Colamita said she worked 16 to 18 hours a day; she was paid only when a garment was complete.

    “I would only take breaks to take care of my children and my family members — that was it,” she said, adding that she currently works as a cleaner and earns €7 per hour. “Now my children have grown up, I can take on a job where I can earn a real wage.”

    Both women said they knew at least 15 other seamstresses in their area who produced luxury fashion garments on a piece-rate basis for local factories from their homes. All live in Puglia, the rural heel of Italy’s boot that combines whitewashed fishing villages and crystal clear waters beloved by tourists with one of the country’s biggest manufacturing hubs.

    Few were willing to risk their livelihoods to tell their tales, because for them the flexibility and opportunity to care for their families while working was worth the meager pay and lack of protections.

    “I know I am not paid what I deserve, but salaries are very low here in Puglia and ultimately I love what I do,” said another seamstress, from the attic workshop in her apartment. “I have done it all my life and couldn’t do anything else.”

    Although she had a factory job that paid her €5 per hour, she worked an additional three hours per day off the books from home, largely on high-quality sample garments for Italian designers at roughly €50 apiece.

    “We all accept that this is how it is,” the woman said from her sewing machine, surrounded by cloth rolls and tape measures.
    ‘Made in Italy,’ but at What Cost?

    Built upon the myriad small- and medium-size export-oriented manufacturing businesses that make up the backbone of Europe’s fourth largest economy, the centuries-old foundations of the “Made in Italy” legend have shaken in recent years under the weight of bureaucracy, rising costs and soaring unemployment.

    Businesses in the north, where there are generally more job opportunities and higher wages, have suffered less than those in the south, which were hit hard by the boom in cheap foreign labor that lured many companies into moving production operations abroad.

    Few sectors are as reliant on the country’s manufacturing cachet as the luxury trade, long a linchpin of Italy’s economic growth. It is responsible for 5 percent of Italian gross domestic product, and an estimated 500,000 people were employed directly and indirectly by the luxury goods sector in Italy in 2017, according to data from a report from the University of Bocconi and Altagamma, an Italian luxury trade organization.

    Those numbers have been bolstered by the rosy fortunes of the global luxury market, expected by Bain & Company to grow by 6 to 8 percent, to €276 to €281 billion in 2018, driven in part by the appetite for “Made in Italy” goods from established and emerging markets.

    But the alleged efforts by some luxury brands and lead suppliers to lower costs without undermining quality have taken a toll on those on those operating at the very bottom of the industry. Just how many are affected is difficult to quantify.

    According to data from Istat (the Italian National Institute of Statistics), 3.7 million workers across all sectors worked without contracts in Italy in 2015. More recently, in 2017, Istat counted 7,216 home workers, 3,647 in the manufacturing sector, operating with regular contracts.

    However, there is no official data on those operating with irregular contracts, and no one has attempted to quantify the group for decades. In 1973, the economist Sebastiano Brusco estimated that Italy had one million contracted home workers in apparel production, with a roughly equal figure working without contracts. Few comprehensive efforts have been made to examine the numbers since.

    This New York Times investigation collected evidence of about 60 women in the Puglia region alone working from home without a regular contract in the apparel sector. Tania Toffanin, the author of “Fabbriche Invisibili,” a book on the history of home working in Italy, estimated that currently there are 2,000 to 4,000 irregular home workers in apparel production.

    “The deeper down we go in the supply chain, the greater the abuse,” said Deborah Lucchetti, of #Abiti_Puliti, the Italian arm of #Clean_Clothes_Campaign, an anti-sweatshop advocacy group. According to Ms. Lucchetti, the fragmented structure of the global manufacturing sector, made up of thousands of medium to small, often family-owned, businesses, is a key reason that practices like unregulated home working can remain prevalent even in a first world nation like Italy.

    Plenty of Puglian factory managers stressed they adhered to union regulations, treated workers fairly and paid them a living wage. Many factory owners added that almost all luxury names — like Gucci, owned by Kering, for example, or Louis Vuitton, owned by #LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton — regularly sent staff to check on working conditions and quality standards.

    When contacted, LVMH declined to comment for this story. A spokesman for MaxMara emailed the following statement: “MaxMara considers an ethical supply chain a key component of the company’s core values reflected in our business practice.”

    He added that the company was unaware of specific allegations of its suppliers using home workers, but had started an investigation this week.

    According to Ms. Lucchetti, the fact that many Italian luxury brands outsource the bulk of manufacturing, rather than use their own factories, has created a status quo where exploitation can easily fester — especially for those out of union or brand sightlines. A large portion of brands hire a local supplier in a region, who will then negotiate contracts with factories in the area on their behalf.

    “Brands commission first lead contractors at the head of the supply chain, which then commission to sub-suppliers, which in turn shift part of the production to smaller factories under the pressure of reduced lead time and squeezed prices,” Ms. Lucchetti said. “That makes it very hard for there to be sufficient transparency or accountability. We know home working exists. But it is so hidden that there will be brands that have no idea orders are being made by irregular workers outside the contracted factories.”

    However, she also called these problems common knowledge, and said, “some brands must know they might be complicit.”

    The ‘Salento Method’

    Certainly that is the view of Eugenio Romano, a former union lawyer who has spent the last five years representing Carla Ventura, a bankrupt factory owner of Keope Srl (formerly CRI), suing the Italian shoe luxury behemoth Tod’s and Euroshoes, a company that Tod’s used as a lead supplier for its Puglian footwear production.

    Initially, in 2011, Ms. Ventura began legal proceedings against only Euroshoes, saying that consistently late payments, shrinking fee rates for orders and outstanding bills owed to her by that company were making it impossible to maintain a profitable factory and pay her workers a fair wage. A local court ruled in her favor, and ordered Euroshoes to pay the debts, which, after appealing unsuccessfully, the company did.

    Orders dried up in the wake of those legal proceedings. Eventually, in 2014, Keope went bankrupt. Now, in a second trial, which has stretched on for years without a significant ruling, Ms. Ventura has brought another action against Euroshoes, and Tod’s, which she says had direct knowledge of Euroshoes’ unlawful business practices. (Tod’s has said it played no role in nor had any knowledge of Euroshoes’ contract issues with Keope. A lawyer for Euroshoes declined to comment for this article.)

    “Part of the problem down here is that employees agree to forgo their rights in order to work,” Mr. Romano said from his office in the town of Casarano, ahead of the next court hearing, scheduled for Sept. 26.

    He spoke of the “Salento method,” a well-known local phrase that means, essentially: “Be flexible, use your methods, you know how to do it down here.”

    The region of Salento has a high unemployment rate, which makes its work force vulnerable. And although brands would never officially suggest taking advantage of employees, some factory owners have told Mr. Romano that there is an underlying message to use a range of means, including underpaying employees and paying them to work at home.

    The area has long been a hub of third-party shoemakers for luxury brands including Gucci, Prada, Salvatore Ferragamo and Tod’s. In 2008, Ms. Ventura entered into an exclusive agreement with Euroshoes to become a sub-supplier of shoe uppers destined for Tod’s.

    According to Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit, she then became subject to consistently late payments, as well as an unexplained reduction in prices per unit from €13.48 to €10.73 per shoe upper from 2009 to 2012.

    While many local factories cut corners, including having employees work from home, Ms. Ventura said she still paid full salaries and provided national insurance. Because the contract required exclusivity, other potential manufacturing deals with rival brands including Armani and Gucci, which could have balanced the books, could not be made.

    Production costs were no longer covered, and promises of an increased number of orders from Tod’s via Euroshoes never came, according to the legal papers filed in Ms. Ventura’s case.

    In 2012, orders from Tod’s via Euroshoes stopped completely, one year after Ms. Ventura first took Euroshoes to court for her unpaid bills. Ms. Ventura said that eventually put Keope on the road to bankruptcy, according to legal documents. Ms. Ventura was declared insolvent in 2014.

    When asked for comment, a Tod’s spokeswoman said in a statement:

    “Keope filed a lawsuit against one of our suppliers, Euroshoes, and Tod’s, to recover damages related to the alleged actions or omissions of Euroshoes. Tod’s has nothing to do with the facts alleged in the case and never had a direct commercial relationship with Keope. Keope is a subcontractor of Euroshoes, and Tod’s is completely extraneous to their relationship.”

    The statement also said that Tod’s had paid Euroshoes for all the amounts billed in a timely and regular manner, and was not responsible if Euroshoes failed to pay a subcontractor. Tod’s said it insisted all suppliers perform their services in line with the law, and that the same standard be applied to subcontractors.

    “Tod’s reserves the right to defend its reputation against the libelous attempt of Keope to involve it in issues that do not concern Tod’s,” the spokeswoman said.

    Indeed, a report by Abiti Puliti that included an investigation by Il Tacco D’Italia, a local newspaper, into Ms. Ventura’s case found that other companies in the region sewing uppers by hand had women do the work irregularly from their homes. That pay would be 70 to 90 euro cents a pair, meaning that in 12 hours a worker would earn 7 to 9 euros.

    ‘Invisible’ Labor

    Home working textile jobs that are labor intensive or require skilled handiwork are not new to Italy. But many industry observers believe that the lack of a government-set national minimum wage has made it easier for many home workers to still be paid a pittance.

    Wages are generally negotiated for workers by union representatives, which vary by sector and by union. According to the Studio Rota Porta, an Italian labor consultancy, the minimum wage in the textile industry should be roughly €7.08 per hour, lower than those for other sectors including food (€8.70), construction (€8) and finance (€11.51).

    But workers who aren’t members of unions operate outside the system and are vulnerable to exploitation, a source of frustration for many union representatives.

    “We do know about seamstresses working without contracts from home in Puglia, especially those that specialize in sewing appliqué, but none of them want to approach us to talk about their conditions, and the subcontracting keeps them largely invisible,” said Pietro Fiorella, a representative of the CGIL, or Italian General Confederation of Labour, the country’s largest national union.

    Many of them are retired, Mr. Fiorella said, or want the flexibility of part-time work to care for family members or want to supplement their income, and are fearful of losing the additional money. While unemployment rates in Puglia recently dropped to 19.5 percent in the first quarter of 2018 from nearly 21.5 percent in the same period a year ago, jobs remain difficult to come by.

    A fellow union representative, Giordano Fumarola, pointed to another reason that garment and textile wages in this stretch of southern Italy have stayed so low for so long: the offshoring of production to Asia and Eastern Europe over the last two decades, which intensified local competition for fewer orders and forced factory owners to drive down prices.

    In recent years, some luxury companies have started to bring production back to Puglia, Mr. Fumarola said. But he believed that power is still firmly in the hands of the brands, not suppliers already operating on wafer-thin margins. The temptation for factory owners to then use sub-suppliers or home workers, or save money by defrauding their workers or the government, was hard to resist.

    Add to that a longstanding antipathy for regulation, high instances of irregular unemployment and fragmented systems of employment protection, and the fact that nonstandard employment has been significantly liberalized by successive labor market reforms since the mid-1990s, and the result is further isolation for those working on the margins.

    A national election in March swept a new populist government to power in Italy, placing power in the hands of two parties — the Five Star Movement and the League — and a proposed “dignity decree” aims to limit the prevalence of short-term job contracts and of firms shifting jobs abroad while simplifying some fiscal rules. For now, however, legislation around a minimum wage does not appear to be on the agenda.

    Indeed, for women like the unnamed seamstress in Santeramo in Colle, working away on yet another coat at her kitchen table, reform of any sort feels a long way off.

    Not that she really minded. She would be devastated to lose this additional income, she said, and the work allowed her to spend time with her children.

    “What do you want me to say?” she said with a sigh, closing her eyes and raising the palms of her hands. “It is what it is. This is Italy.”


    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/20/fashion/italy-luxury-shadow-economy.html
    #fashion #mode #industrie_textile #travail #exploitation #Italie #esclavage_moderne #Pouilles #made_in_Italy #invisibilité #travail_à_la_maison #mondialisation #luxe #MaxMara #Gucci #Kering #Louis_Vuitton #LVMH #Salento #Carla_Ventura #Keope_Srl #CRI #Euroshoes #Tod's #Salento_method #Prada #Salvatore_Ferragamo

    via @isskein

  • How GitHub became the nexus of software automation | ZDNet
    https://www.zdnet.com/article/how-github-sneaked-up-on-us-to-become-the-nexus-of-software-automation

    To call GitHub a website is to call Italy a place to eat. GitHub is the leading practitioner of an emerging marketplace — and yes, it may legitimately be called a “market” because it does generate revenue. It earned, by several estimates, over $200 million in revenue in 2017, and was evidently valuable enough to Microsoft to prompt it to purchase GitHub outright, in a $7.5 billion all-stock deal last June.

    It is accurate and fair to say that GitHub created a market in the supply of open-source software, and the automation of its deployment. There are other competitors in this market, most notably GitLab and Atlassian’s Bitbucket. It’s the presence of those players that legitimizes this market.

    What GitHub has become is the most effective example to date of a web service that absorbs the function of an entire industry’s supply chain. Open-source software has been shared online in the past, with SourceForge being one of the most effective practitioners. But the distribution of software through SourceForge, and sites like it, takes place using a content management system — a platform best suited for folks using web browsers.

    What does deserve further scrutiny as time goes on, however, is how this deal, by legitimizing the open-source delivery pipeline as a top-tier industry, will alter the character of the open-source movement. If it was ever truly a counter-culture, it certainly isn’t one now. Although GitHub’s profitability may not be directly due to the popularity of sharing code, it is indeed tied to the automated, pipelined supply chain to which open source gave rise. If that model is truly as influential as open source proponents assert it to be, then nothing Microsoft would do to change it one way or the other, in the long run, should have any noticeable effect.

    #Logiciel_libre #GitHub #Industrie_du_logiciel #Neurocapitalisme

  • #aviation Turns to #blockchain for Management Solutions
    https://hackernoon.com/aviation-turns-to-blockchain-for-management-solutions-d0448fbacace?sourc

    Blockchain technology is breaking out of its traditional cryptocurrency model. The applications for a secure, transparent, and highly traceable distributed ledger system are nearly endless.One application that’s being examined by a variety of industries is supply chain management. Blockchain provides a perfect complement for existing systems that need to track the origin, handling, and ultimate destination of a part or product throughout an often convoluted and frequently global supply matrix.Supply chains, like the industries they serve, are diverse and keyed toward different factors. A food supply chain must emphasize speed and care in handling, while a bulk commodity supply chain — like coal or iron ore — must be efficient and fungible.The supply chain for industrial and aviation parts (...)

    #management-solutions #ico #iot

  • #blockchain in Supply and #logistics
    https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-in-supply-and-logistics-2a240e69c522?source=rss----3a8144eabf

    Supply chains are riven with inefficiencies and problems. Blockchain can help — and the first applications are already being trialled.With the increasing globalisation and complexity of manufacturing processes, supply chains have also become correspondingly more complicated. The average electronics product you buy at a retail outlet, for example, is the result of many, many different steps that have taken place at different locations across the world as raw materials are sourced, processed, and made into components that are themselves sold and shipped to provide the basic parts for more intricate items. The failure of any one of the stages in the supply chain — or perhaps ‘supply tree’ might be a more apt description — means costly delays for the final product. Conventional systems aren’t good (...)

    #supply-chain

  • E-commerce supply chains and the #blockchain
    https://hackernoon.com/e-commerce-supply-chains-and-the-blockchain-ad6634c57a5f?source=rss----3

    Decentralised technologies have a range of value propositions for online merchants. Chief amongst these is the integrity of the supply chain — something that conventional solutions are poor at maintaining.Blockchain technology has, to date, been limited to two major applications. The first is online currency: the peer-to-peer transfer of value pioneered by bitcoin. Many subsequent protocols have modified and improved bitcoin’s technology, but one way or another, digital cash is currently blockchain’s chief use case. This functionality of peer-to-peer value transfer has been leveraged by the second major application, the ICOs or decentralised crowdfunding that have emerged over the past five years and which came to global prominence in 2017.But blockchain offers far more than the ability to (...)

    #delivery-software #supply-chain-management #supply-chain #e-commerce-business

  • Chocolate industry drives rainforest disaster in Ivory Coast | Environment | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/13/chocolate-industry-drives-rainforest-disaster-in-ivory-coast?CMP=share_

    The world’s chocolate industry is driving deforestation on a devastating scale in West Africa, the Guardian can reveal.

    Cocoa traders who sell to Mars, Nestlé, Mondelez and other big brands buy beans grown illegally inside protected areas in the Ivory Coast, where rainforest cover has been reduced by more than 80% since 1960.

    Illegal product is mixed in with “clean” beans in the supply chain, meaning that Mars bars, Ferrero Rocher chocolates and Milka bars could all be tainted with “dirty” cocoa. As much as 40% of the world’s cocoa comes from Ivory Coast.

    #cacao #déforestation

  • Less than 1% of surplus food from farms and manufacturers used to feed hungry | Environment | The Guardian
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/18/less-than-1-of-surplus-food-from-farms-and-manufacturers-used-to-feed-h

    While retailers and supermarkets have doubled the amount of surplus food sent to feed the needy in the last three years, a high volume of food that never makes it into the shops is being needlessly wasted elsewhere in the supply chain, it said.

  • IBM, Maersk Reveal #Blockchain Solution for Global Supply Chain – gCaptain
    https://gcaptain.com/imb-maersk-reveal-blockchain-for-global-supply-chain

    Technology giant IBM and Maersk, owner of the leading transport and logistics company Maersk Line, have announced a potentially groundbreaking collaboration to use “blockchain” technology to digitize transactions among the world’s vast and interconnected network of shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities participating in the supply chain. 

    If widely adopted, the technology could transform the global, cross-border supply chain and save the industry billions of dollars, according to IBM and Maersk. 

    Ninety percent of goods in global trade are carried by the ocean shipping industry each year. As part of the collaboration, IBM and Maersk intend to work with a network of shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities to build the new global trade digitization solution, which is expected to go into production later this year.

    Blockchain technology, perhaps best known as the system behind the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, has the potential to vastly reduce the cost and complexity of trading to establish transparency among parties. The solution is designed to help reduce fraud and errors, reduce the time products spend in the transit and shipping process, improve inventory management and ultimately reduce waste and cost.

    • ça vient, ça vient, …
      Maersk, IBM to launch blockchain-based platform for global trade
      https://www.reuters.com/article/us-maersk-blockchain-ibm/maersk-ibm-to-launch-blockchain-based-platform-for-global-trade-idUSKBN1F51

      The world’s largest container shipping firm A.P. Moller-Maersk is teaming up with IBM to create an industry-wide trading platform it says can speed up trade and save billions of dollars.

      The global shipping industry has seen little innovation since the container was invented in the 1950s, and cross-border trade still leaves an enormous trail of paperwork and bureaucracy.

      Success of the platform, which will be made available to the ocean shipping industry around mid-2018, depends on whether Maersk and IBM can convince shippers, freight forwarders, ocean carriers, ports and customs authorities to sign up.

      Blockchain technology powers the digital currency bitcoin and enables data sharing across a network of individual computers.
      […]
      A shipment of refrigerated goods from East Africa to Europe can go through nearly 30 people and organizations and involve more than 200 different communications, according to Maersk. Documentation and bureaucracy can be as much as a fifth of the total cost of moving a container.

  • Why Some Silicon Valley Tech Executives Are Bunkering Down For Doomsday
    http://www.npr.org/2017/01/25/511507434/why-some-silicon-valley-tech-executives-are-bunkering-down-for-doomsday

    Max Levchin who was a co-founder of PayPal, is the CEO of Affirm, a lending startup, who is opposed actually to this trend of survivalist thinking but is surrounded by it. He said what people worry about is, to use Max’s word, “the pitchforks,” and by that he means the idea that the sort of tension that we saw with the Occupy movement a few years ago would take on a wider, more virulent form.

    [...]

    To give you an example, he said, “The food that’s on the shelves in our grocery stories depends on a supply chain that depends on GPS and GPS, the Global Positioning System, depends to some degree on the Internet, and the Internet depends to some degree on another system known as DNS, and each one of those is vulnerable in its own way.”...

    He’s a highly rational person. ... He said, “Look, I’m not rushing out and declaring that the end of the world is near, but what I am saying is that it is,” in his view, “logically rational to talk about the fragility of these digital and electrical systems, which are really second nature and largely unexamined as we go about our daily lives.”

    https://16553.mc.tritondigital.com/NPR_381444908/media-session/baec9d8b-055b-4a34-83ce-f08d4950f04a/anon.npr-podcasts/podcast/381444908/511658475/npr_511658475.mp3

    Ou comment quelques pontes de la Silicon Valley se préparent au « doomsday », doutant entre autre de la solidité du système technique qu’ils dirigent face aux conséquences de la destruction du système politique et social que d’une certaine manière ils organisent.

    L’article original du New Yorker (Evan Osnos) :
    http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

    Le Survival Condo :
    http://survivalcondo.com

    #Donald_Trump #Numérique #Politique #Silicon_Valley #Survivalisme #États-Unis

  • For Apple and others, tin supply chain has ties to rebel-held Myanmar mine | Reuters
    http://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-tin-insight-idUSKBN13N1VV

    From a remote corner of northeastern Myanmar, an insurgent army sells tin ore to suppliers of some of the world’s largest consumer companies.

    More than 500 companies, including leading brands such as smartphone maker Apple, coffee giant Starbucks and luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co, list among their suppliers Chinese-controlled firms that indirectly buy ore from the Man Maw mine near Myanmar’s border with China, a Reuters examination of the supply chain found.

    The mine is controlled by the United Wa State Army (UWSA), which the United States placed under sanctions for alleged narcotics trafficking in 2003. The seven companies extracting tin from the mine are all owned or controlled by Wa military and government leaders, Wa officials and people with close ties to UWSA leadership told Reuters.

    This potentially puts companies, which also include industrial conglomerate General Electric, at risk of violating sanctions that forbid “direct or indirect” dealings with blacklisted groups, according to a former and a serving U.S. official and lawyers with expertise in sanctions enforcement.

    Several sanctions experts said the U.S. government was unlikely to fine companies who unwittingly used the Myanmar tin. Still, it may force them to shift to new suppliers, they said.

    #Birmanie #extraction_minière #multinationales

  • US Officials Ask How ISIS Got So Many Toyota Trucks - ABC News
    http://abcnews.go.com/International/us-officials-isis-toyota-trucks/story?id=34266539

    U.S. counter-terror officials have asked Toyota, the world’s second largest auto maker, to help them determine how ISIS has managed to acquire the large number of Toyota pick-up trucks and SUVs seen prominently in the terror group’s propaganda videos in Iraq, Syria and Libya, ABC News has learned.

    Toyota says it does not know how ISIS obtained the vehicles and is “supporting” the inquiry led by the Terror Financing unit of the Treasury Department — part of a broad U.S. effort to prevent Western-made goods from ending up in the hands of the terror group.

    “We briefed Treasury on Toyota’s supply chains in the Middle East and the procedures that Toyota has in place to protect supply chain integrity,” said Ed Lewis, Toyota’s Washington-based director of public policy and communications.

    Toyota has a “strict policy to not sell vehicles to potential purchasers who may use or modify them for paramilitary or terrorist activities,” Lewis said. He said it is impossible for the company to track vehicles that have been stolen, or have been bought and re-sold by middlemen.

    Obtained by ABC News
    ISIS militants race through Raqqa in a propaganda training film released online in September 2014.more +
    Toyota Hilux pickups, an overseas model similar to the Toyota Tacoma, and Toyota Land Cruisers have become fixtures in videos of the ISIS campaign in Iraq, Syria and Libya, with their truck beds loaded with heavy weapons and cabs jammed with terrorists. The Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Lukman Faily, told ABC News that in addition to re-purposing older trucks, his government believes ISIS has acquired “hundreds” of “brand new” Toyotas in recent years.

    “This is a question we’ve been asking our neighbors,” Faily said. “How could these brand new trucks... these four wheel drives, hundreds of them — where are they coming from?”

    ISIS propaganda videos show gunmen patrolling Syrian streets in what appear to be older and newer model white Hilux pick-ups bearing the black caliphate seal and crossing Libya in long caravans of gleaming tan Toyota Land Cruisers. When ISIS soldiers paraded through the center of Raqqa, more than two-thirds of the vehicles were the familiar white Toyotas with the black emblems. There were small numbers of other brands including Mitsubishi, Hyundai and Isuzu.

    “Regrettably, the Toyota Land Cruiser and Hilux have effectively become almost part of the ISIS brand,” said Mark Wallace, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, who is CEO of the Counter Extremism Project, a non-profit working to expose the financial support networks of terror groups.

    “ISIS has used these vehicles in order to engage in military-type activities, terror activities, and the like,” Wallace told ABC News. “But in nearly every ISIS video, they show a fleet — a convoy of Toyota vehicles and that’s very concerning to us.”

    Toyota says many of the vehicles seen in ISIS videos are not recent models. “We have procedures in place to help ensure our products are not diverted for unauthorized military use,” said Lewis, the Toyota executive.

    But, Lewis added, “It is impossible for Toyota to completely control indirect or illegal channels through which our vehicles could be misappropriated.”

    Questions about the ISIS use of Toyota vehicles have circulated for years. In 2014, a report by the radio broadcaster Public Radio International noted that the U.S. State Department delivered 43 Toyota trucks to Syrian rebels. A more recent report in an Australian newspaper said that more than 800 of the trucks had been reported missing in Sydney between 2014 and 2015, and quoted terror experts speculating that they may have been exported to ISIS territory.

    Attempts to track the path of the trucks into ISIS hands has proven complicated for U.S. and Iraqi officials.

    Toyota’s own figures show sales of Hilux and Land Cruisers tripling from 6,000 sold in Iraq in 2011 to 18,000 sold in 2013, before sales dropped back to 13,000 in 2014.

    Brigadier General Saad Maan, an Iraqi military spokesman, told ABC News he suspects that middlemen from outside Iraq have been smuggling the trucks into his country.

    “We are spending our time to fight those terrorists so we cannot say we are controlling the border between Iraq and Syria,” he conceded. “We are deeply in need for answers.”

    In a statement to ABC News, Toyota said it is not aware of any dealership selling to the terror group but “would immediately” take action if it did, including termination of the distribution agreement.

    Toyota distributors in the region contacted by ABC News said they did not know how the trucks reached ISIS.

    Sumitomo, a Japanese conglomerate that ships vehicles to the region, wrote to ABC News, “In terms of how anyone operating outside of the law obtain vehicles for misappropriation, we have no way to know and therefore cannot comment.”

    A spokesman for former owners of the Toyota dealership in Syria said its sales operation was halted in 2012.

    The former owners, a Saudi company called Abdul Latif Jameel, said it “made the decision to cease all trading activities in the country and fully divested the business in October, 2012,” according to a spokesperson.

    Wallace, of the Counter Extremism Project, said his organization wrote directly to Toyota earlier this year to urge the company to do more to track the flow of trucks to ISIS, and noted that the trucks are stamped with traceable identification numbers.

    “I don’t think Toyota’s trying to intentionally profit from it, but they are on notice now and they should do more,” Wallace said. “They should be able to figure it out... how are these trucks getting there. I think they should disclose that, put a stop to that, and put policies and procedures in places that are real and effective to make sure that we don’t see videos of ISIS using Toyota trucks in the future.”

    Earlier this year, Toyota responded to Wallace’s organization with similar language the company has used to answer questions from ABC News, writing that Toyota stopped entirely its sales of vehicles in Syria several years ago.

    Toyota told ABC News that after company officials briefed the U.S. Treasury team and that Treasury indicated the meeting was “helpful.”

    “We cannot provide further details of our interaction with Treasury as we do not want to compromise its efforts to understand and prevent diversion, or make it easier for illicit groups to penetrate our supply chains or those of any other company,” Lewis said.

    Treasury officials told ABC News they could not comment publicly about the agency’s engagement with specific private companies. But in response to questions about Toyota, the officials said investigators are “working closely with foreign counterparts and stakeholders” on the issue.

    ABC News’ Randy Kreider and Mazin Faiq contributed to this report.

  • Hanjin Ships Get Stranded in High Seas, Roiling Supply Chain - Bloomberg
    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-09-01/hanjin-s-ships-get-stranded-in-high-seas-roiling-supply-chain

    Hanjin Shipping Co.’s vessels are getting stranded at sea after the South Korean container mover filed for court protection, roiling the supply chain of televisions and consumer goods ahead of the holiday season.
    LG Electronics Inc. is trying to find new carriers for its goods, the world’s second-largest manufacturer of televisions said. Shipments through Hanjin account for between 15 percent and 20 percent of LG’s deliveries to America. Hyundai Merchant Marine Co., the nation’s second-biggest container line, stepped in, saying it plans to add 13 more vessels to ease the squeeze.

    #échoué_en_haute_mer

    • Marooned Hanjin vessels spark shipping crisis | Daily Mail Online
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3770319/Marooned-Hanjin-vessels-spark-shipping-crisis.html

      Forty-five of our 144 vessels are unable to operate in the normal fashion in some 10 countries,” a Hanjin spokesman told AFP.

      Some of them are being impounded, others being barred from docking or discharging,” he said.

      Hanjin’s vessels, sailors and cargo are stuck in a maritime limbo as ports, wary they will not be paid for their services, refuse to let them dock, as well as refusing to handle or free cargo already landed.

      Also effected are ships not owned by Hanjin but contracted by it or those belonging to its alliance members, along with cargo and containers on board those vessels.

      US retailers, bracing for fall-out from Hanjin’s woes as they stock up for the crucial Christmas holiday sales season, have asked Washington to step in and help resolve a growing crisis, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

      10 Hanjin vessels were either seized or denied access at Chinese terminals in Shanghai and Tianjin over the past 48 hours, according to local media reports, with another vessel seized in Singapore earlier the week.

      An estimated 540,000 containers are expected to face delivery delays, according to the reports.

    • Hanjin bankruptcy causes global shipping chaos, retail fears | Daily Mail Online
      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3770081/Hanjin-bankruptcy-causes-global-shipping-chaos-retail-fears.html

      Three Hanjin container ships, ranging from about 700 feet to 1,100 feet (213 meters to 304 meters) long, were either drifting offshore or anchored away from terminals on Thursday. A fourth vessel that was supposed to leave Long Beach on Thursday morning remained anchored inside the breakwater.

      The Seoul-based company said Friday that one ship in Singapore had been seized by the ship’s owner. Hanjin Shipping spokesman Park Min did not confirm any other seizures.

      As of Friday, 27 ships had been refused entry to ports or terminals, she said.

      That left cargo headed to and from Asia in limbo, much to the distress of merchants looking to stock shelves with fall fashions or Christmas toys. “Someone from the garment industry called earlier today asking: ’How long is this going to go on, because I’ve got clothing out there,’” Louttit said.

    • U.S. Firms Take Action Against Hanjin As Vessels Are Denied at Ports
      http://fortune.com/2016/09/02/hanjin-shipping-ports-us-firms

      Roughly half of Hanjin Shipping’s container vessels have been blocked from ports since the South Korean firm’s collapse, putting manufacturers and their customers increasingly on edge about the fate of cargo and spikes in freight costs.

      Woes for world’s seventh-largest container shipper have only deepened since its banks withdrew support and it filed for court receivership this week. One vessel has also been seized by a creditor in Singapore while firms in the U.S. have launched legal action against Hanjin to seize vessels and other assets over unpaid bills.

      The potential for cargo to be stranded, perhaps indefinitely, is unnerving for many – particularly as industry insiders and analysts believe that Hanjin has little chance of being rehabilitated and its assets will eventually be liquidated.
      […]
      Hanjin accounts for 7.8% of trans-Pacific trade volume for the U.S. market and has a global client base. Of 8,281 owners of goods to be transported as of late August, 847 were South Korean firms, according to government data.

  • How to Use the New PALM Risk Tool in 3 Easy Steps « Global Forest Watch
    http://blog.globalforestwatch.org/2016/06/how-to-use-the-new-palm-risk-tool-in-3-easy-steps

    Et donc, voilà, on peut pas dire qu’on ne savait pas !

    Global Forest Watch Commodities just released the new PALM Risk Tool, which helps companies spot deforestation in their supply chain before it happens. This powerful new tool combines cutting edge geospatial data with an unprecedented dataset of 800 palm oil mills all around the world—with more being added constantly.

    Here are three easy steps to start using the PALM Risk Tool today.

    #industrie_palmiste #déforestation #cartographie

  • Thai fishing industry turns to trafficking: ’We witnessed girls being raped again and again’ – video

    A year after the Guardian exposed slave labour in the supply chain of Thai prawns sold in supermarkets globally, a new investigation links Thailand’s fishing industry with transnational trafficking syndicates exploiting some of the world’s most persecuted people. Hundreds of #Rohingya migrants were sold from jungle camps to Thai fishing boats producing seafood. With the industry in crisis, fishermen are moving closer to traffickers, converting boats to create huge off-shore trafficking camps

    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/video/2015/jul/20/thailand-fishing-industry-rohingya-trafficking-slavery-rape-video?CMP=s
    #exploitation #pêche #Thaïlande #trafic_d'êtres_humains #traite #travail #exploitation #vidéo #documentaire
    cc @reka @albertocampiphoto

  • Major Brazilian supermarket chain will stop stocking Amazon-destroying beef
    http://news.mongabay.com/2016/04/major-brazilian-supermarket-chain-will-stop-stocking-amazon-destroyin

    Pão de Açúcar, which operates 832 stores across the country, has pledged to stop stocking its shelves with beef linked to Amazon deforestation or produced by enslaved workers by June 30.

    “We have worked to mitigate the social and environmental risks of our supply chains,” a company spokeswoman said, according to Reuters.

    Environmental activists hailed Pão de Açúcar’s decision as a major victory for the Amazon, but cautioned that the hard work still must be done. “To operate in the Amazon, companies must stop buying from farms involved in land grabbing, slavery or deforestation,” Adriana Charoux of Greenpeace told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “They have a lot of work to do before June 30.”

    #Déforestation #Brésil #viande #élevage #éthique

  • Companies from 20 countries involved in Islamic State bomb supply chain - Yahoo Finance UK
    https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/islamic-state-bomb-supply-chain-includes-firms-20-000359241.html

    Companies from 20 countries are involved in the supply chain of components that end up in Islamic State explosives, a study found on Thursday, suggesting governments and firms need to do more to track the flow of cables, chemicals and other equipment.
    The European Union-mandated study showed that 51 companies from countries including Turkey, Brazil, and the United States produced, sold or received the more than 700 components used by Islamic State to build improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
    IEDs are now being produced on a “quasi-industrial scale” by the militant group, which uses both industrial components that are regulated and widely available equipment such as fertiliser chemicals and mobile phones, according to Conflict Armament Research (CAR), which undertook the 20-month study.
    Islamic State controls large swathes of Iraq and Syria. NATO member Turkey shares borders with both countries and has stepped up security to prevent the flow of weapons and insurgents to the hardline Sunni group.
    A total of 13 Turkish firms were found to be involved in the supply chain, the most in any one country. That was followed by India with seven.
    […]
    Bevan said the Turkish government refused to cooperate with CAR’s investigation so the group was not able to determine the efficacy of Ankara’s regulations regarding the tracking of components.
    Turkish government officials did not reply to requests for comment.
    […]
    Seven Indian companies manufactured most of the detonators, detonating cord, and safety fuses documented by CAR. Those were all legally exported under government-issued licences from India to entities in Lebanon and Turkey, CAR found.
    Companies from Brazil, Romania, Russia, the Netherlands, China, Switzerland, Austria and Czech Republic were also involved, the report found.