Using the Power of Supply Chains to End Sexual Harassment

In the year since allegations of sexual misconduct against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein shocked the public, the #MeToo movement has exposed widespread workplace sexual harassment—not just in the entertainment world, but across industries.

Last week, we at New America’s Better Life Lab published what we believe is a novel, forward-thinking report on the reality that harassment is “severe, pervasive, and widespread” across low and high income jobs and male- and female-dominated occupations. We also published an accompanying toolkit, called #NowWhat?, aimed at stakeholders invested in changing this reality. Among the recommendations we offer, one in particular is salient to businesses: supply-chain reform.

In a nutshell, this means leveraging consumer, worker, and corporate power to drive change at the companies you do business with.

Consider the Fair Food Program, which leverages farmworker and consumer pressure to demand that food buyers, like fast-food companies, demand that their food suppliers take harassment and other workplace abuses seriously.

In 2011, the Coalition of Immokalee workers banded together to get consumers on board to pressure the agricultural industry to improve working conditions. Workers organized to lobby consumers to buy only from food sellers that have been certified as a “Fair Food Farms,” placing pressure on Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Wendy’s, and other food sellers to “sign legally-binding agreements promising to only source tomatoes from Fair Food Farms with no outstanding wage theft, trafficking, sexual harassment, or other issues.” Certified farms then comply with auditors and participate in worker-education programs to “ensure farm workers have the right to work without violence and the opportunity to create a workplace of respect and dignity.”

How’s this approach working so far? Journalist Bernice Yeung found that “in the program’s seven years, 35 supervisors have been disciplined for sexual harassment, and 10 have been fired.” She continues: “Since 2013, two incidents of sexual harassment have been identified. The program’s most recent annual report notes that during the 2016–17 growing season, more than 70% of participating farms reported no incidents of sexual harassment.” These findings are significant, given that our review of the research on sexual harassment in male-dominated, low-wage industries such as farm work found evidence of widespread rape. A 2010 study showed that 80% of farm working women report experiencing sexual harassment.

The way the Coalition of Immokalee Worker and Fair Food Program ensure success is by creating user-friendly, independent reporting processes for sexual harassment, conducting peer-to-peer training about sexual harassment and workplace rights in an accessible manner, taking regular climate surveys to inform the co-creation of civil workplace practices and enforcement of respectful workplace norms, and making sure employees know that they’re more important than any one harassing foreman or farmer. Notably, the Fair Food Program food addresses many other issues beyond sexual harassment, including wage theft and human trafficking, but their efforts use supply-chain reform to eliminate sexual harassment provides a novel example of how to prevent and address workplace abuse—a strategy that other industries and organizers can use.

So how can firms like yours get ahead of the curve and encourage reform across their own supply chain before they face activist pressure?

First of all, take stock of the many corporations that rely on your company’s business, either as a buyer, a retailer, or a contractor. These are companies you might have enormous influence over, even if they don’t technically operate under your management.

Second, using resources like our report, find out what kinds of factors are letting sexual harassment flourish in companies you do business with. No two industries are alike. This might be a matter of workplace hierarchies, lackluster HR policies, or longstanding cultural assumptions about who belongs in one occupation or another.

Then, it’s time to make your priorities and values about harassment and workplace culture known. This might entail drawing up a clear, written statement on what you expect from your partners and suppliers, and consequences for when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.

Lastly, make it official. You can do this by asking your partners across your supply chain to sign onto an agreement about what is and isn’t tolerated in their workplaces, and then, and this is important, come up with a collective way to enforce that agreement. Will there be annual climate surveys and audits of how your partners are doing? And if so, are you ready to follow through on the consequences you laid out and potentially take your business elsewhere? This is where the power your firm has to influence change across your own industry and others’ really lies.

Of course, supply-chain reform is just one of a multitude of ways a single company can improve workplace culture beyond its own walls. But none of this will be effective unless a firm takes care of its own workers first. It’s one thing for McDonald’s to sign on to the Fair Food Agreement and use its power to protect farmworkers who are picking the tomatoes they buy. But as the strike against McDonald’s for its lackluster response to sexual harassment in September showed, it still has work to do in protecting its own workers from workplace abuse.

With the right research, dedicated partners, and a plan of action, a company can change not only its own workplace culture—but also all those linked to it.