Terminating Facility Gamma: forced overtime and passport confiscation

[MasonJ]

I've been reviewing the quarterly compliance reports from our overseas manufacturing partners, and I'm genuinely troubled by the latest audit findings from Facility Gamma. The documented working conditions, particularly the excessive mandatory overtime under threat of termination and the confiscation of passports, seem to cross a clear line. As the head of supply chain ethics, I need to present this to the board next week, but I'm struggling to frame the severity of these human rights violations against the financial impact of potentially severing the contract.

[Jonathan.T]

What data do you have on remediation timelines, or any third-party audits planned? If you’re short on hard numbers, you could at least outline scenarios: best case, worst case, and a middle ground.

[Donald66]

Whoa, that’s rough. Passport confiscation and forced overtime are serious red flags—definitely need escalation.

[DonaldUT]

I’d frame it like this for the board: legal exposure (labor laws, international conventions), operational risk (overtime fatigue, accidents), reputational risk (media, consumer backlash), and the financial pull-through (remediation costs, potential supply gaps). Then offer a couple of remediation options with rough timelines.

[Kenneth37]

From my experience, these issues show up as two big risks: human rights violations and potential supply disruption if the factory pushes back on reforms. If you can tie them to remediation costs and reputational fallout, the board might take it seriously.

[Natalie55]

We did a back-of-the-envelope cost of non-compliance once. It wasn’t just fines; there was downtime, contract rework, and customer trust erosion. Not a clean number, but it helped illustrate the stakes.

[RonaldM]

Might depend on your contract language. If there’s a termination-for-cause clause tied to humanitarian violations, severing could be cheaper than dragging out a remediation, but that’s not always the case.