Four technology executives testifying in front of Congress agreed not to use slave labor to manufacture their products.
Rep. Ken Buck, a Colorado Republican who sits on the House antitrust subcommittee, got Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, and Sundar Pichai of Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, to agree not to use harmful practices to build their products on Wednesday afternoon.
“Will you certify here today that your company does not use and will never use slave labor to manufacture your products or allow products to be sold on your platform that are manufactured using slave labor?” he asked them before bringing up legislation from Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley that would expand upon supply chain disclosure obligations and require routine independent audits to ensure companies are not complicit in forced labor.
“I would love to engage on the legislation with you, congressman. Let me be clear: Forced labor is abhorrent, and we would not tolerate it in Apple. And so I would love to get with your office and engage on the legislation,” Cook responded.
Buck then went to each of the executives and asked if they would “agree that slave labor is not something that you will tolerate in manufacturing your products or in products that are sold on your platforms?” All agreed that they wouldn’t use slave labor.
Hawley’s bill would require companies to report to the Department of Labor that their supply chains do not depend on slave labor. Company executives would have to certify their supply chains are free from slave labor or that they have reported all instances of forced labor in their companies.
“Corporate America and the celebrities that hawk their products have been playing this game for a long time — talk up corporate social responsibility and social justice at home while making millions of dollars off the slave labor that assembles their products. Executives build woke, progressive brands for American consumers, but happily outsource labor to Chinese concentration camps, all just to save a few bucks,” Hawley said in a statement.
Hawley’s office referenced the more than 80 global companies that have reportedly been tied to forced Uighur labor in China, from sportswear companies such as Nike, Adidas, and Puma to tech giants Lenovo and Samsung.
