Multinational businesses are facing mounting pressure to identify and address risks of exploitation, trafficking and modern slavery in their supply chains. Digital worker reporting tools present unprecedented opportunities for lead firms to reach out directly to hard-to-reach workers for feedback on their working conditions via their mobile phone. These new technologies promise an efficient and cost-effective way to cut through the complexity of global production, gathering unmediated data on working conditions directly from workers at scale. As the market for these tools grows, this paper contextualises their emergence within the broader political economy of supply chain governance. It presents three sets of concerns about their use that must be addressed by businesses, investors, donors and governments that develop or utilise these tools. First, the quality of data gathered by these tools may be inadequate to reliably inform decision-making. Second, global brands may gather large quantities of worker data to identify legal, reputational and financial risks without addressing structural causes of exploitation or delivering outcomes for workers. Third, large scale collection of data from workers creates new risks for workers’ wellbeing and safety.

中文翻译：

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解决供应链中的剥削：技术是否可以改变工人的声音？

跨国企业面临越来越大的压力，要在其供应链中识别和应对剥削，贩运和现代奴役的风险。数字工作者报告工具为领先企业提供了前所未有的机会，可以使领先企业直接通过手机联系难以到达的工作者，以反馈其工作条件。这些新技术有望以有效且经济高效的方式降低全球生产的复杂性，直接从大规模工人那里收集有关工作条件的无中介数据。随着这些工具市场的增长，本文将它们在供应链治理的更广泛政治经济学中的出现与背景联系起来。它提出了三类关于其使用的担忧，开发，利用这些工具的企业，投资者，捐赠者和政府必须解决这些担忧。第一，这些工具收集的数据质量可能不足以可靠地为决策提供依据。其次，全球品牌可能会收集大量的工人数据来识别法律，声誉和财务风险，而无需解决剥削或为工人带来成果的结构性原因。第三，从工人那里大规模收集数据会给工人的健康和安全带来新的风险。