Starbucks - Article 26 ICCPR (freedom from discrimination)

Starbucks Coffee Company is a for-profit public company that operates globally as a major roaster and retailer of coffee. It has over 25,000 retail shops in around 70 countries around the world.

On 12 April 2018, two black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were at the Center City Starbucks store in Philadelphia in the United States. According to the men they arrived at the store, Nelson asked the manager if he could use the bathroom, and the manager said that the bathrooms were only for paying customers. A company official has reiterated that this is a policy of the store.

The men then returned to their table and were approached by the manager who asked if she could help them. The men told the manager that they were waiting for a business meeting. Two minutes after their arrival, the manager reported the men to the police, stating that they were “refusing to make a purchase or leave”. Soon after, the police arrived and arrested the two men. A customer captured the arrest in a video on their mobile phone which has since been circulated on the internet. The men were taken to jail cells and released after midnight, upon the District Attorney’s decision not to prosecute them for trespass.

The arrest generated a significant response from the community. In the days following the incident, protesters gathered outside the shop and then stood in front of the counter with posters whilst chanting slogans.

Kevin Johnson, the CEO of Starbucks, admitted that the suspicion which led to the arrest was due to their race and that he was ‘embarrassed’ and ‘ashamed’ of this. He publicly apologised for the incident and described its result as a ‘reprehensible outcome’. Johnson sought to reassure employees and customers that Starbucks ‘stands firmly against discrimination or racial profiling’. Starbucks released a media statement indicating that the CEO and people involved in the incident were engaging in discussions to ensure that the incident facilitated ‘positive social change’.

Another media statement revealed that in the days after the incident, the CEO and his leadership team engaged with the community to determine ‘what we did wrong and the steps we need to take to fix it’. In particular, Starbucks decided to close all of their company-owned retail stores and corporate offices in the United States on the afternoon of 29 May 2018 to carry out racial-bias education. Whilst the closures caused significant financial losses, the CEO asserted that it was an ‘investment in our people and our company’.

The men who were arrested are demanding that changes be made. They have allegedly had a meeting with the CEO and discussed the implementation of a Bill of Rights poster in stores, as well as new policies for customer ejections and racial discrimination.

Starbucks maintains that the business is founded on a culture of diversity and inclusion. In fact, it claims to create an inclusive environment through networks such as the Black Partner Network which is designed to allow employees to ‘share the African American experience’. Starbucks has apparently started reviewing its training and systems to ensure that its stores continue to reflect the company’s Mission and Values.

Facebook - Article 17 ICCPR (right to privacy)

Facebook’s approach to its users’ privacy came under fire in March 2018 when allegations were confirmed in relation to a data breach affecting 87 million Facebook users. A former employee at Cambridge Analytica, a data analysis firm specialising in psychographic modelling, provided testimony to the Times and The Guardian that Cambridge Analytica had purchased this Facebook data in 2015 from an academic, Aleksandr Kogan.

In 2014, Kogan circulated a personality quiz on Facebook. Users could only take the quiz after consenting to allow the application to ‘scrape’ data from their Facebook profile, and from the Facebook profiles of their unwitting Facebook friends. About 270,000 people took the quiz, but through the friends’ profiles loophole data was obtained from up to 87 million users.

Facebook applications were permitted by Facebook’s terms of service (‘terms’) to access friends’ profiles for certain purposes until 2014. Kogan’s application had ostensibly stated that the data was being collected for academic purposes, a practice allowed by the terms. When Facebook learned that the data had in fact been sold to Cambridge Analytica in breach of the terms, it immediately secured assurances from Cambridge Analytica and Aleksandr Kogan that the data was destroyed. However, it never followed up to ensure that such destruction had taken place. Furthermore, it did not inform users’ of the breach involving their data.

When the breach was confirmed, Facebook publicly acknowledged the importance of data privacy and that their response to the breach had been inadequate. In an interview and in an appearance before a US Senators committee, CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that Facebook “didn’t do enough to prevent these tools [including data scraping] from being used for harm”. Through announcements on Facebook and in newspapers, a message from Zuckerberg said: “We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can’t then we don’t deserve to serve you”. Facebook also belatedly took steps to make affected users aware that their privacy had been breached, and announced a system to make all users more aware of the information that they share when they use certain applications on Facebook.

Facebook further promised to apply globally the “spirit” of the protections of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) which came into effect on 15 May 2018. The GDPR seeks to guarantee digital rights for EU citizens, including data privacy protections irrespective of the location of the data. However, Facebook’s promise to adopt the GDPR was almost immediately questioned when it elected to move more than 1.5 billion users out of the reach of the new privacy laws.

Apple - Article 10 ICESCR (right to a family life)

Tech giants Apple and Facebook announced in October 2014 that they would offer up to $20,000 to U.S based female employees to cover the costs of freezing their eggs. Egg freezing is increasingly being used by women who want to delay motherhood for non-medical reasons. For example, women may choose to freeze their eggs if they have not found the right partner or if they want to focus on their career. “We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families” the company said in a statement.

Many companies have since followed suit, including Google, Uber, Yahoo, Snap, Netflix and eBay. The option aims to give employees more freedom to pursue family planning. It helps younger females who may not want kids in their twenties, but do not want the risks that come with delaying childbirth into their later years. The egg freezing policies expand upon the pre-existing generous family benefits offered by these companies. For example, Netflix offers up to 52 weeks of paid parental leave and Facebook offers adoption and surrogacy assistance.

Critics have suggested that the benefit suggests to female employees that their careers are so important that starting a family should be deferred. However, the financial assistance provided for egg-freezing by these companies expands a woman’s choice and provides options for creating a family and maintaining a work/family balance. It is not a compulsory policy.

This case study is also relevant to Article 23 of the ICCPR – the rights of protection of the family and the right to marry.

Use of Cobalt - Article 24 ICCPR (rights for children)

The world is increasingly powered by lithium-ion rechargeable batteries, ranging from those found in smartphones to those in electric vehicles. These rechargeable technologies are attractive because they reduce the total number of batteries manufactured and causing harmful waste. However, a report by Amnesty International published in January 2016 has shown that cobalt, a key component of lithium-ion batteries, is being mined by children as young as seven in extremely poor conditions. Amnesty International alleges that cobalt mined by children in hazardous conditions is entering the supply chain of some of the world’s largest tech companies and electric vehicle manufacturers, including Microsoft, Tesla, Samsung and many more.

More than half of the world’s cobalt comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). UNICEF has estimated that 40,000 children are involved in mining cobalt in the DRC. “Companies have a responsibility to prove that they are not profiting from the misery of miners working in terrible conditions in the DRC. The energy solutions of the future must not be built on human rights abuses” Amnesty official Seema Joshi said in a statement.

Amnesty’s most recent report, published in November 2017, ranked industry giants including Apple, Samsung, Dell, Microsoft, BMW, Renault and Tesla on how much they have improved their cobalt sourcing practices since January 2016. Amnesty commended Apple for becoming the first company to publish information about its cobalt suppliers. Apple has since become the industry leader in terms of responsible cobalt sourcing and has actively engaged with suppliers to address child labour in its supply chain, temporarily. However, Amnesty International alleges that electric vehicle companies are lagging behind their counterparts in the consumer electronics sector and have made little progress to address hazardous child labour concerns. Renault, Daimler, BMW, Tesla and Volkswagen all refused to disclose the identities of their smelters/refiners.

Coca-Cola - Article 6, ICESCR; Article 7, ICESCR; Article 8, ICCPR

In March 2018, Reuters announced that Coca-Cola, the US State Department and two other companies had launched a joint project to develop a secure blockchain registry for workers.

The project comes after a study released in 2017 by KnowTheChain (KTC) identified that the food and beverage industry is an “at-risk” sector with regard to labour rights, and that most companies in the industry fall short in their efforts to solve the problem. Although KTC ranked Coca-Cola second on its benchmark, it identified potential for the company to improve by “auditing recruiters used in its supply chain and improving and disclosing its practices in the areas of worker voice and remedy.”

The blockchain registry project may address some of these concerns. Blockchain refers to a distributed and decentralised ledger technology that enables data to be stored in a real-time and immutable online record. Each ‘block’ stores some specific data, which could be an amount of money, a digital certificate of ownership, or the terms of a contract. When the data is modified or transferred a new block storing the updated data is permanently added next to the previous one, creating the immutable chain of blocks (the ‘blockchain’). The entire system is cryptographically recorded and continuously verified by a network of participating computers worldwide.

Coca-Cola’s project will capitalise on blockchain’s smart contracts capabilities, which allow contracts to be verified, facilitated and enforced. In Coca-Cola’s instance, the project will likely store the details of sugarcane workers’ employment contracts (i.e. scope of work, pay, and employment term) on the blockchain, enabling workers and enforcement agencies (including workers’ unions) to ensure that these contracts are upheld by employers and recruiters throughout the supply chain. Brent Wilton, Coca-Cola’s global head of workplace rights, told Reuters that the company is joining the project “to further increase transparency and efficiency of the verification process related to labor policies within [Coca-Cola’s] supply chain.”

Multinational companies in other industries are also adopting blockchain technologies to minimise risks of labour abuse. These invariably function by attributing digital identities to resources based on predetermined characteristics in order to reliably track their progress through the supply chain. In 2018 several businesses in China, technology giants Apple and Samsung, and car manufacturers Tesla and Volkswagen set up a blockchain-enabled Responsible Cobalt Initiative. The initiative seeks to minimise the potential for child labour being used in supply chains. A similar project has been implemented in the diamond industry to reduce ‘blood diamond’ practices.

HSBC - Article 6 ICCPR (right to life)

Following a US government investigation, HSBC Bank USA admitted in 2012 it had violated US laws regarding money laundering and financial crimes. The bank reached a settlement with the Department of Justice for US$1.9 billion. Neither HSBC nor any individual was prosecuted over the matter. The violations involved the laundering of at least US$881 million in illicit drug money linked to, among others, drug cartels from Mexico between 2006 and 2010.  

Drug cartels are heavily dependent on money laundering because of their reliance on cash transactions. Furthermore, the majority of gun crimes in Mexico are committed with weapons manufactured and sold in the US, requiring access to US currency. Accordingly, money laundering must be curbed in order to truly combat the illicit drug trade and its attendant violence.

From 2006 to 2010 — the first four years of an escalated drug war between Mexican authorities and the country’s drug cartels, and the period during which US$881 million in narco cash was laundered through HSBC subsidiaries — more than 28,000 people died in drug related violence in Mexico, according to official estimates. A failure to adequately implement anti-money laundering controls fuels atrocities that violate the right to life.

In 2016, some of the families of people killed by Mexican cartels filed suit against HSBC in a Texas court for allegedly providing “continuous and systematic support” for certain Mexican cartels.

NFL - Article 12 ICESCR (right to health)

The National Football League (NFL) is the largest professional sports league for American football, one of the most popular sports in the US. Concussion is a constant danger in the sport, which involves numerous high impact collisions between players. Over time, multiple instances of concussive and sub-concussive trauma can cause lasting damage to the brain.

Between 2005 and 2007, Dr Bennet Omalu, a forensic pathologist, published papers linking American football to chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease caused by repeated brain trauma. The condition itself is linked to mental impairment, mood disorders and suicidal tendencies. After Omalu’s first paper was published, the NFL’s Mild Traumatic Brain Injury committee (MTBI) called for it to be retracted, describing the research as “completely wrong”. The NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was also dismissive of the findings.

Nevertheless, public interest in the matter led to a congressional inquiry in 2009, after which the NFL announced a comprehensive reform of its concussion policy. Among other things, players who were knocked unconscious by concussion were barred from playing for at least the rest of the day, and each game was required to have a 29-person professional medical team on hand. 

The NFL took further measures in the wake of a federal class action lawsuit representing more than 4,500 former players. As part of a settlement reached in 2013 and approved by the court in 2015, the League agreed to set up a US$765 million medical fund for more than 20,000 retired players, providing baseline medical support and treatment for neurological conditions. Additionally, players diagnosed with CTE before the settlement date became eligible for up to US$5 million in compensation.

In March 2016, the League publicly acknowledged the link between American football and CTE. Later that year, Goodell announced the Play Smart Play Safe initiative, which will see US$100 million donated to brain injury research and education. However, controversy continues to swirl over the safety of the sport and the adequacy of the NFL’s initiatives so far.

It is estimated that these initiatives will cost the NFL US$1 billion over a period of 65 years. However, it is likely that the actual costs will be much higher, especially in terms of the health impact on players. A 2016 study revealed that more than 40% of retired NFL players had signs of traumatic brain injury, putting them at high risk of developing neurological degenerative disease later on in life.

CTE cannot currently be diagnosed before death, as it involves the sectioning of the brain. Researchers from the VA Boston Healthcare System and Boston University studied the brains of 202 deceased players of American football and released their findings in July 2017. They found CTE present in 99% of the deceased NFL players and 91% of the deceased college football players. This sample was not random, as the relevant families had suspected brain damage, but they are still concerning.