Mercy Investment Services
January 20, 2016
It’s filing season for Mercy Investment Services so we have been writing letters, talking with companies and for the laggards and non-responders, filing shareholder resolutions.
This year our focus again has been with the trucking industry. We have three new resolutions asking trucking companies to address the issue of trafficking, train their drivers and report publically on the work. We have been working closely with Truckers against Trafficking and their program which trains truck drivers for free. It currently connects to the US hotline but could be replicated in other countries.
One new feature of the program is to work with companies that move cargo/products. They call it the ‘shipping partners program’ where they ask a large company such as Walmart to put on their vendor transit contracts a question about training your staff on the issue. Walmart has adopted the program and is asking all their delivery companies to train drivers. Information on the program is available at http://www.truckersagainsttrafficking.org/shipping-partners-program/
We continue work with the hotel chains. Five major hotel chains have now signed the ECPAT code including: Carlson, Choice Hilton, Hyatt, and Wyndham. As the work with airlines also continues, Delta has signed on to the ECPAT code, American has adopted a new policy (after the merger with US Air) and continues to sporadically offer ad space for an non- profit working on trafficking in their magazine. United has received a shareholder resolution due to being a laggard responder.
An additional change in the landscape this year is that the lead of the work at ICCR has left to run a direct service agency serving victims of trafficking. Mercy has taken over that leadership role in the trafficking work at ICCR and has seen expanded visibility for our work.
The labor side of trafficking is also part of our work. There has been quite an effort to get businesses to support the Business Supply Chain Transparency act which is hoped to be introduced in Congress again this year. In addition to this we continue to ask companies with large supply chains to look at their vendors in the chain and assure that No Fees for the opportunity to work are charged to the employee and that work documents are always available to employees.
Pat Zerega
