Welsh Government, Living Wage Foundation and TISCreport forge alliance to tackle In-Work Poverty in Wales, and the UK

Welsh Government, the Living Wage Foundation and TISCreport - the world’s only transparency in supply chains register**** already monitoring compliance with the Modern Slavery Act* - have joined forces to publish which companies have been accredited*** as Living Wage Employers.

Says Stephen Chapman, Anti-Slavery Partnership Coordinator for Welsh Government: “The Wales Anti-Slavery Leadership Group is determined to tackle slavery and labour exploitation in Wales. We have established our ‘Ethical Employment in Supply Chains - Code of Practice’ for Welsh public supply chains and beyond. Our partnership with the Living Wage Foundation and TISCreport enables us to make the data on Living Wage Employer Accreditation available for all who wish to use it to promote better social outcomes.”

Mari Arthur, Director of Cynnal Cymru, says: “Cynnal Cymru - Sustain Wales is the national sustainable development charity in Wales, with over 16 years’ experience of supporting change for a sustainable future. We became the Living Wage Accrediting Body for Wales in 2016 in order to work towards getting people in work out of poverty”. She continues “We support ethical employment practices generally and through the Living wage can help deliver real benefits to the people living and working in the most deprived areas of Wales; there are huge inequalities that urgently need redressing. With over 4,000 Living Wage accredited employers across the UK, 150,000 people are now receiving an increased salary (with £613 million extra in low paid workers pockets since the start of the campaign). However, there are currently just 144 accredited employers in Wales. Through working in partnership with the Living Wage Foundation, Welsh Government and the TISCreport we hope to strengthen this work in the UK as well as improving local economies in Wales and making sure everyone has the opportunity of fair wages.”

Jaya Chakrabarti MBE, CEO, TISCreport, adds "We're really proud to be able to announce the addition of data showing if an organisation is an accredited Living Wage Employer (or not) to the TISCreport transparency in supply chains register** as part of our partnership with Welsh Government to encourage ethical employment in supply chains”. She adds "Further, our partnership with the Living Wage Foundation will enable us to raise awareness with our public, private and voluntary members about which of their suppliers are accredited Living Wage Employers across the whole of the UK. Members of the public will also be able to see this publicly on our site. We will update this monthly and look forward to celebrating more workers in public supply chains paid at or above the Living Wage."

TISCreport has built its platform to enable buyers to quickly check their supply chains for available corporate transparency data. Just by uploading their suppliers from their systems, public sector buyers can keep their supply chains transparent, and they can check modern slavery act compliance for free.”

In accordance with section 54 of the UK Modern Slavery Act TISCreport tracks websites of all those companies and groups known by the system to be over £36M in turnover as well as recording voluntary compliance from organisations below the threshold. More critically, the system automatically alerts companies that are overdue that they need to take action as long as social media or email contact details are available.

The TISCreport dynamic dataset is continually being updated, and there are now 917 UK public bodies within the system. It is a certified open data provider, free to join, enabling an in-depth drill down of data against shared supply chains via a private, secure dashboard. Uniquely, beyond the UK, TISCreport interlocks intelligently with related global legislations focussing on supply chain transparency and tackling modern slavery/ human trafficking.

Says Stuart Gallemore, CTO of TISCreport, “We’re worked hard to create a platform to help organisations fight modern slavery collaboratively, compatible with global technology systems and that is GDS**** compliant. With critical mass reached on the compliance data side we are now looking to join things up quickly with intelligence on the ground that can help real victims of exploitation. We’re integrating rapidly now with numerous related data sets that provide even deeper insights for all our members. The Anti-Slavery Helpline team are on the front foot with their approach to data sharing. These are exciting times!”

As a B-Corp***** social enterprise, TISCreport funds itself through subscription fees and data services from organisations able to afford the £200 annual fee. 50% of the subscription fee goes directly to anti-slavery charity Unseen, which runs the UK Anti-Slavery Helpline.

* http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2015/30/section/54/enact...
** https://tiscreport.org/
*** https://www.livingwage.org.uk/
**** https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/10/13/the-characteristics-of-a-...
***** http://bcorporation.uk/

--- ends ---

About Welsh Government Anti-Slavery Partnership

The Code of Practice on Ethical Employment in Supply Chains has been developed in response
to:

1. The supply chain provision in the Modern Slavery Act (2015).

2. Concerns around on-going problems with unfair employment practices, including false self-employment, blacklisting of unionised workers, and unfair use of umbrella employment schemes and zero hours contracts.

3. The Welsh Government’s commitment to promoting the Living Wage Foundation’s Living Wage.

The Code has 12 commitments, fitting on two sides of A4, which involve putting policies in place, including questions in procurements and contract conditions where necessary, and carrying out regular risk assessments on categories of spend, with focussed action where issues are identified. Although it is voluntary, all organisations in receipt of public money, directly or via grants or contracts, are expected to sign up.


About Living Wage Foundation & Cynnal Cymru

The real Living Wage is the only UK wage rate that is voluntarily paid by over 4,000 UK businesses who believe their staff deserve a fair day's pay for a hard day's work.

Over the past 15 years Citizens UK and the Living Wage Foundation have led the campaign to ensure that work is the surest way out of poverty and that employees earn enough to live on.

Cynnal Cymru - Sustain Wales is the Living Wage Foundation's partner and accrediting body in Wales.

https://www.livingwage.org.uk/
http://www.cynnalcymru.com/living-wage/
livingwage@cynnalcymru.com

A Citizens UK initiative:
Living Wage Foundation, Citizens UK Head Office,
136 Cavell Street, London E1 2JA


About TISCreport

TISCreport.org is an open data platform where anyone can easily search for company anti-slavery information. It also provides great resources to the registered organisations to help them actively improve and comply with the legislation through a range of accessible tools, including a supplier dashboard and a machine readable statement builder. It enables companies who have to comply with legislation to check through their suppliers to find out who else needs to comply, and also provides prompts to help them draft their own statements. It is the only open data anti-slavery register built to Government Digital Service (GDS) standards and built upon GDS registers. As a self-funded B-corp social enterprise it has:

1. Achieved 0.5M Supplier records and largest data set of modern slavery statements in the world.

2. Added datasets for TISC CA statements (the Californian Supply Chain transparency act), Conflict Mineral Statements and now EU Non-Financial Reporting Directive

3. Contacted over 5k UK organisations technically not-in-compliance with the Modern Slavery Act

4. Presented at Westminster (“50 Shades of Compliance”(!)) in September 2017)
https://pressreleases.responsesource.com/newsroom/Tiscreport...

5. Invited to give evidence to Australian Government within their consultation for their own Modern Slavery Act, and subsequently specifically named in the recommendations to be consulted with and partnered to accelerate their own repository.
https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Joi...

6. Been named as official partners with Welsh Government to administer their Ethical Employment in Supply Chains Code of Practice, and the Home Office
http://gov.wales/docs/dpsp/publications/valuewales/170502-et...

7. Been assessed by the UK Anti-Slavery Commissioner in his MSA Repository Consultation in January 2017 and again in October 2017 in Australia, and judged to have significant merit.
https://tiscreport.org/news/tiscreport-referenced-uk-indepen...

8. Been named as a UK Govtech exemplar case study by the Government Digital Service.
https://registers.cloudapps.digital/case-study-tiscreport

9. Created a Business Advisory Panel with the CBI, CIOB, CIPS, FSB and Business West
https://tiscreport.org/our-business-advisory-panel

10. Been named an anti-corruption tech finalist at the US Institute of Peace Cloud Tech awards
https://www.c5accelerate.com/c5-announces-short-list-inaugur...

11. Been named a Computing Magazine’s Big Data Awards “Best Emerging Technology” Finalist
https://www.computing.co.uk/ctg/news/3028993/shortlist-annou...

12. Been named in the Co-op Party charter against modern slavery for use by local authorities.
https://tiscreport.org/news/tiscreport-referenced-anti-slave...


Contact Information
For further information or to arrange an interview please contact Jaya Chakrabarti at TISCreport.org.
Tel: +44 (0) 117 9273113
email: press@tiscreport.org