Stone industry faces the challenge of addressing modern slavery

Source: Stone Specialist ©2016

The Modern Slavery Act that came into force in April 2016, represents a challenge for the stone industry in the UK, both for importers and contractors, even though most stone companies are too small to be caught by its reporting requirement directly.

The Act requires companies to report on what they are doing to identify and eradicate slavery from their supply chains. But it kicks in at an annual turnover threshold of £36 million, beyond the income of most stone companies. However, many of the developers and contractors the industry works for will be above the threshold and will want to know what their sub-contractors and those supplying those sub-contractors are doing to ensure slavery is not involved in the stone they use.

Hopefully, companies extracting stone from the British Isles are not using slave labour and would not find it particularly hard to demonstrate that. However, The Human Trafficking Centre (in 2015) put the number of slavery victims in the UK at 2,744. Some are run by unscrupulous gangmasters who require their gangs to work long hours and deprive them of basic amenities as well as the money paid for their labour.

Construction sites in this country have been known to use labour supplied by gangmasters. No doubt they are all licensed and perfectly legitimate. But not all gangmasters are and in June 2016, in a landmark judgement, a British gangmaster company was found liable for the first time for victims of modern slavery.  It was a civil case, rather than a criminal case, brought by six Lithuanians who said wages had been kept from them and they had been forced to work back-to-back shifts, depriving them of sleep. They had not been allowed toilet or refreshment breaks and had been threatened with violence. The English firm they worked for blamed a Lithuanian who managed them for the abuses and said he had left the UK. However, the judge determined that the British firm was responsible. It is likely it will have to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds in compensation. The men were employed in farming, not construction.

This sort of abuse is part of what the Modern Slavery Act is trying to combat. Because of the nature of the work in mines and quarries it is probably not happening in the minerals extraction industry in the UK. Let’s presume that is the case.  For stone importers it is a different matter, especially with so much stone coming from the Far East, even if some of it arrives in the UK via a distributor on mainland Europe, which further complicates the supply chain. But there is every chance that companies buying stone slabs or tiles originating from the Far East do have modern slavery in their supply chains – or, at least, they cannot be certain they do not.

The most highlighted form of slavery is in India, where it takes the form of bonded labour.  That quite often involves children, either because a mother has taken her children along to work with her or because children have been put to work to pay off family debts.  The people are ‘bonded’ because they cannot leave the job until a debt is repaid, which it might never be because the interest rates are so high the person can be deemed to be paying off the interest only.

These debts can be passed down through the generations, effectively causing children to be born into slavery.  Adults and children are treated as slaves, working long hours, eating what they are fed, sleeping in crammed dormitories or on the floor at the place of work and beaten if they dissent.  Of course, it keeps down the price of the goods they are producing.

Bonded labour has been illegal in India since 1976 but even official figures accept there are still 250,000 people in bonded labour there, many of them working in quarries. Unofficially the figure is put as high as 5% of the subcontinent’s 1,300 million population. That’s 65 million people – the population of the UK.  It has to be said that that is more than the number usually quoted for world-wide slavery, which is 30 million, a figure produced in the Global Slavery Index published by the Walk Free Foundation in 2013. But any number is a stab in the dark. Nobody knows.

A Unicef report, Children’s lives cast in stone, says: “Across India, an estimated 200,000 children are employed in the sandstone industry.” It quotes a 2010 report by the Mine Labour Protection Campaign based on research it carried out in the sandstone regions of Kota and Bundi in Rajasthan. It found 38% of children in these areas worked in stone quarries. Unicef says: “These quarries are no place for children; working conditions are hazardous and lead to many adverse health effects.”  The adverse health effects of working in a sandstone quarry for these children can be accidents that maim and kill, as well as unprotected exposure to respirable crystalline silica (RCS), which can lead to silicosis. In the UK, exposure limits to RCS are now 0.1mg in a cubic metre of air. If you want first hand accounts of what Silicosis is like, take a look at a report and video here.

It is said that in many areas of India the police are compliant in maintaining slavery, chasing people down and returning them if they try to escape.

But it is not only in India that slavery exists. Other countries also maintain a slave labour force through terror and subversion.  China is estimated to have 3 million slaves, as well as prisoners set to work.  How many (if any) work in the stone sector could only be another guess.  But even if they are not working in quarries and stone processing factories, they will, no doubt, be involved in some of the goods and services keeping the stone industry going.  Chinese practices have received less attention because The West likes to trade with China and does not wish to risk upsetting its rather sensitive hierarchy.

It is not realistic to assume two men in a van working in this country templating and fitting Chinese or Indian granite kitchen worktops or putting tiles on floors and walls can trace the supply chain of the materials they are using.  But it should not be beyond the ability of those importing and wholesaling the stone to trace its provenance.

Indeed, some importers have been engaged in improving the lot of workers in their supply chains for some time, notably (but not exclusively) on the hard landscaping side of the industry, where a lot of Indian sandstone from Rajasthan is used. The sandstone quarries of Rajasthan are remote – too remote to drop in on unannounced (or even find without a guide).  It is there particularly that families from the caste that used to be known as ‘untouchable’ but has lately renamed itself ‘Dalit’ (oppressed) can be seen working in quarries, with even toddlers wielding heavy hammers helping their mothers to break up lumps of stone.

In the 1990s, when the lower priced Indian sandstone started winning paving projects from the UK’s own natural stone, including Yorkstone, British stone companies at first cried ‘foul’ then quickly started importing Indian sandstone and Chinese granite for themselves in order to protect their market positions.  It was a move the country has reason to be grateful for.  It put natural stone into price contention with concrete and clay and was instrumental in moving the hard landscaping market – domestic, commercial and public sector – comprehensively into natural stone, significantly improving the aesthetics of the spaces between and around buildings.

But there was growing concern about slavery in the Far East. It tended to focus on the textile industry but turned occasionally to stone, with reports in the press and on television of bonded labour, including children. Because people buy stone less frequently than they buy clothes, it did not resonate a strongly as the concern about the textile sector but there was always a danger it could blow up in the face of the stone industry.  It was partly because of that – but also because most people would like to bring slavery to an end if they could – that reputable companies have made efforts to ensure their suppliers know they will tackle such practices in their supply chains.

The Modern Slavery Act that received Royal Assent in March 2015 (although it did not come into force until April 2016) put the onus on all larger companies to take care about their supply chain, with the intention that their efforts would trickle down to smaller companies, although the government did not want to add directly to the burden of red tape facing those smaller companies by requiring them to report on slavery directly in their annual returns.  Contrary to what some believe, the legislation was not inspired by Europe. Theresa May, Home Secretary at the time, was proud to have introduced the first legislation of its kind in Europe, and among the first in the world, addressing slavery and people trafficking specifically the way it applies in the 21st century.

She said when the Bill received the Royal Assent: “The presence of modern slavery in today’s society is an affront to the dignity and humanity of every one of us. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 is an historic milestone.”

In the stone industry, too, it is the UK leading the way. The matter was discussed at a recent meeting of EuroRoc, the confederation of trade associations in Europe that includes representation by Stone Federation Great Britain, the Minerals Products Association’s Dimensional Stone Group and the National Association of Memorial Masons (NAMM). At the latest meeting it was clear that the drive to raise awareness of modern slavery comes from the UK.  If companies take the responsibility seriously, stone importers might be expected to be able to provide information about their supply chains that their customers demand. That will give UK importers who have a serious response to the questions being asked a competitive advantage.

The trade associations in stone are looking at ways to help their members respond to the modern slavery issue.

Nearly all memorials these days are imported.  On the memorial side of the industry, NAMM passed a resolution several years ago to publish the anti-slavery credentials of memorial wholesalers. It now has a page on its website listing wholesalers who have provided a statement on slavery. The names link through to the statements. There are only six wholesalers who have produced statements so far, but they are six of the main importers and wholesalers: A & J Robertson (Granite), Frank England & Co, George Willcox (Granite), Odlings, R Pascoe & Sons, and Strongs Memorials. To read what they say go to the NAMM website.

NAMM says that in response to the “very real problem” of slavery its General Council has agreed this “positive action initiative and invited all NAMM wholesalers to contribute”.

The full article can be viewed at  Stone Specialist