A recent BBC investigation has uncovered a serious issue in a Mcdonald’s branch. The issue was not with the food, but with the staff. Specifically, the Caxton, Cambridgeshire branch of McDonald’s was found to have employed 16 victims of modern slavery.

Under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, UK businesses have specific obligations to help combat modern slavery. This legislation applies primarily to businesses with a turnover of £36 million or more annually. These larger companies are legally required to publish an annual statement detailing the steps they have taken to ensure that modern slavery and human trafficking are not present in their operations or supply chains.

The statement, often referred to as a Modern Slavery Statement, must be approved at the highest levels of the organisation (such as the board of directors) and must be made publicly available on the business’s website.

The Modern Slavery Act recommends that the following six areas are covered in any statement:

  1. Organisation structure and supply chains: Companies must outline their operations and supply chains, describing how they function and where potential vulnerabilities to modern slavery might exist.
  2. Policies in relation to slavery and human trafficking: The statement should highlight the internal policies in place to prevent and address modern slavery, such as supplier codes of conduct, ethical trading policies, and whistleblowing mechanisms.
  3. Due diligence processes: used to vet suppliers and job applicants.
  4. Risk assessment and management: Businesses need to assess where risks of modern slavery are highest, both in their direct operations and in their supply chains.
  5. Key performance indicators to measure effectiveness of steps being taken
  6. Training on modern slavery and trafficking: Employers are expected to describe the training provided to staff on modern slavery In their statement, businesses are expected to disclose the following:

Proper training and due diligence might have helped McDonald’s detect the signs of slavery sooner. Red flags included:

  • The wages of four men were paid into one bank account
  • The UN’s International Labour Organisation says that excessive overtime is an indicator of forced labour. One of the McDonald’s employees was said to have worked a 30-hour shift.
  • The employees were unable to speak English
  • Job applications were completed by gang members, who sat-in on job interviews as translators; and
  • There were multiple employees who had the same registered address.

Modern slavery must be tackled both in operations and in supply chains. The McDonald’s investigation found that the gang of human-traffickers also forced victims to work in a bread factory in Hertfordshire which supplied major UK supermarkets. The supermarkets involved have promised to look-again at the steps outlined in their modern slavery statements aimed at weeding out modern slavery in the supply chain.

The obligations placed upon employers under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 are not particularly detailed or onerous. The sanctions for non-compliance are also light-touch. The secretary of state can enforce the duty to publish a statement via an injunction but there are no other civil or criminal penalties linked to breach at the present time. There is a growing awareness that the Act lacks ‘teeth’.  Baroness May, commenting on the McDonald’s situation, said she accepted the law had failed to protect victims in this case and suggested it needed to be “beefed up”. A House of Lords Select Committee on the Modern Slavery Act 2024 is due to report at the end of this year on the impact of the Act and whether it requires improvement.

For businesses wanting to take pro-active steps to review measures in place to protect against modern slavery now, useful support is available in the form of the published British Standard on Modern Slavery and the government’s own statutory guidance.