Chamber of Commerce says bill isn’t right approach to combating slavery

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Business groups including the California Chamber of Commerce found themselves in the awkward position Tuesday of opposing state legislation aimed at combating slavery.

Chamber executive Marc Burgat said his group opposes slavery and human trafficking, and that many of the Chamber’s members are taking steps to combat the scourge, but that he thinks SB 657 is not the right answer. The measure would force large retail and manufacturing companies to say on their websites what steps, if any, they take to make sure their products are not coming from sources that enslave workers.

Prefacing his comments by saying it was ‘not a happy moment’ that he was testifying against the legislation, Burgat told the Assembly Judiciary Committee that the bill would ‘set up California businesses for failure’ by requiring them to undertake the often-impossible task of determining whether any raw materials provided by sub-vendors in their supply chain are the product of slave labor overseas.

‘For many businesses, this is simply not possible -- they lack the resources to monitor foreign supplier employment practices, they have no authority to enforce state or federal labor law with regard to suppliers, and in many cases they do not have access to information regarding raw materials or other supply chain issues,’’ the California Grocers Assn., California Retailers Assn. and other groups said in a letter.

But Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said the bill he introduced would lead to companies sending letters to suppliers asking them whether materials are the product of slavery.

‘That is not onerous,’ Steinberg said during the committee hearing. ‘That’s the beginning of trying to join with the companies already doing a lot of things to try to eradicate this terrible stain.’

The Assembly panel recommended the bill after hearing testimony from a Los Angeles sweatshop worker who said she was enslaved by a Garment District employer.

-- Patrick McGreevy