Flutter’s Modern Slavery Statement
flutter.comI think all UK companies of a certain size need to publish something like this. E.g. "Dyson" was the first UK-based company that popped into my head, and I found this: https://www.dyson.com/inside-dyson/terms/modern-slavery-stat...
Is there something particular about this one of note?
Note that slavery is still legal in the USA, and they don’t specifically say they won’t use such labor in the US.
Text of 13th amendment (note the disclaimers) https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-13/
Prisons are the main source of slave labor / involuntary servitude in the US, and provide over a million workers.
For Flutter Entertainment plc, not to be confused by Flutter.io (Google's Cross-platform UI Toolkit).
For those unfamiliar with British colloquialisms, a flutter is "a small speculative venture or gamble." e.g. "I took a flutter on crypto and invested $100 in an NFT of a sunset."
This is where my mind went and I was incredibly confused, as good as it is to decry modern slavery.
In my head modern slavery is the cheap and dangerous labor in other countries we rely on altogether; even the voluntary workers. It doesn't make sense to me that we still so easily value the lives of people who happen to be born somewhere else lower than those who were born more nearby. Why don't we pay the same minimum wage we do here in other countries? Or require the same safety measures etc? Yet we all just play along quietly endorsing widespread use of power to further inequality as long as it suits us.
Wait, what?? Hold on a second. Why do they feel the need to say this? Some important piece of information is being omitted here. It's like if you bought a box of cereal and it said on it, "Now, with 50% less cyanide!"
Is says it right in the second section of the post:
> This statement has been published in accordance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (the “Act”). It sets out the steps taken by Flutter Entertainment plc and our subsidiaries during the year ending 31 March 2021 to prevent modern slavery and human trafficking in our business and supply chains.
> Why do they feel the need to say this?
It appears to be in fulfillment of an obligation under UK law—from the statement itself: This statement has been published in accordance with the Modern Slavery Act 2015
I don't mean to sounds cynical, but what is this really going to do besides signaling to investors how much they "care".
If the company was a mine, or some other business with a large on the ground operation in places where modern slavery is a thing, then I could see a statement like this holding water.
But you guys arent a mine, or a lumber factory, you provide online gambling services. I'm really struggling to see what they could possibly do one way or the other in terms of modern slavery besides the usual like auditing your vendors, but again, hard to imagine them having vendors that employ modern slavery given their market.
As tech workers it's not always obvious that there's a wide range of people that any sufficiently large business will have contractual dealings with, be it cleaners, construction workers, painters and decorators, or retail staff. In low skilled labour jobs especially there is a risk of exploiting trafficked or enslaved workers unless due diligence is undertaken.
Statements like this are common on the websites of British companies. There are regulatory and reporting requirements related to the Modern Slavery Act 2015 [0] although I'm not sure of the precise details; something to do with auditing your supply chains maybe? As you've pointed out, it can be a bit farcical for companies in certain industries to make these kind of statements, but the law is what it is.
I also wondered what’s the connection between the online gambling industry and slavery so I Googled.
Here’s one article I found: https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Cyber-slaver...
It's a requirement under UK law. They have retail operations (as stated in the disclosure) and a large number of suppliers in a wide variety of countries. I agree that they are fairly low risk on average but some of those vendors will be in high risk sectors.
Digital exploitation is real and often forgotten about.
I have a friend in Ghana who was offered - by a UK company who are a Google Cloud partner - £1/hour to do work for them as a junior DevOps engineer.
Yes, £1/hour. Before he had to pay taxes.