MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale
Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition

Research

Consumer Activism and Supply Chain Transparency: Contemporary Anti-slavery Movements in the United Kingdom and United States

A central takeaway from the Gilder Lehrman Center’s Modern Slavery Working Group and the 2018 GLC International Annual Conference: “Fighting Modern Slavery: What Works?” was broad agreement that attempts to eradicate the current phenomenon of forced labor must harness civil society, governments, businesses, and workers alike.  Voluntary ethical certification schemes for private industry under the guise of Corporate Social Responsibility have been shown to be insufficient mechanisms for preventing coerced labor. Recent empirical studies have demonstrated that worker-led labor rights movements as well as state regulatory regimes are essential components for creating structural support for fair wages and decent working conditions.

Based on these insights from the Working Group, the Gilder Lehrman Center undertook a research project focused on regulatory schemes that seek to address forced labor. This project captures the history of these efforts through archival research as well as interviews with key actors in the development of anti-slavery supply chain-transparency laws. The project focuses on two leading supply chain transparency instruments: the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (implemented in 2012) and the Transparency in Supply Chains Clause of the United Kingdom’s Modern Slavery Act of 2015.  

A central goal of the project is to create an archive of this critical aspect of the modern anti-slavery movement. By collecting oral histories, we preserve and record the accounts of key actors as well as documentary evidence. The interviews provide a base of historical comparison between producer- and consumer-responsibility advocacy as a tool for antislavery activism, past and present. The oral histories are kept in a digital archive held at the GLC and are available to the public by application for those doing research on the motivations of policymakers and advocates and the effect on businesses, consumers, and workers who are at risk of abuse and other related work.

For inquiries regarding access to the interview materials, please contact:
Michelle Zacks
Associate Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition
The MacMillan Center at Yale University
PO Box 208206
New Haven, CT 06520
michelle.zacks@yale.edu

 

Research Team

Project Director:

  • David W. Blight, Director, Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition; Sterling Professor of History, Yale University

Lead Researchers:

  • Amb. Luis C.deBaca (ret.), Professor from Practice, University of Michigan Law School; Gilder Lehrman Center Affiliated Scholar

  • Kate Cooney, Senior Lecturer in Social Enterprise and Management and Director of the Inclusive Economic Development Lab, Yale School of Management

  • Song Kim, New York University School of Law JD ’13; Yale School of Management MBA ’20:  Lawyer & Educator focused on Human Rights, Racial and Economic Justice, and Ethical Consumption

  • Griffin Black, YC ’18;  PhD in History, University of Cambridge ’22; Yale Law School JD ’25  

Research Project Participants

Detailed biographical information on project participants is available on the Modern Slavery Research Project - Biographies page.

Kevin Bales - a world-renowned academic, author, and activist dedicated to understanding and ending modern slavery. He is currently Professor of Contemporary Slavery at the University of Nottingham, where his work combines rigorous research with advocacy to expose how supply chains, environmental harms, and global economic systems intertwine with forced labor.

Justin Dillon - a social entrepreneur, artist, author, and abolitionist whose work seeks to expose and dismantle systems of forced labor through technology, creative media, policy, and consumer engagement. As founder and CEO of FRDM (and formerly Made in a Free World), Dillon works with corporations, NGOs, governments, and communities to promote supply chain transparency, remediate human rights abuses, and shift both consumer behavior and institutional accountability.

Alison Kiehl Friedman - an expert in human rights, anti-slavery, and public policy whose career bridges government, nonprofit leadership, and legislation. She co-founded ASSET (Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking), a nonprofit working on human trafficking in global supply chains, and was instrumental in authoring the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act, landmark legislation that served as a model for similar laws internationally. 

Julia Ormond - an Emmy award–winning actress and a dedicated human rights advocate whose work has spanned decades and continents. She is the President of the Alliance to Stop Slavery and End Trafficking (ASSET) and the Founding Chair of FilmAid International, a nonprofit launched during the Kosovo refugee crisis that uses film and storytelling to promote health, strengthen communities, and enrich the lives of the world’s most vulnerable and uprooted.

Andrew Wallis - the founding Chief Executive Officer of Unseen UK, a leading charity dedicated to ending modern slavery through survivor support, systemic prevention, and partnership with business and government. Since co-founding Unseen in 2008, Andrew has guided its work from establishing safe houses and the UK Modern Slavery & Exploitation Helpline to influencing the legal and policy frameworks that shape how modern slavery is addressed in the UK.