Corporate Accountability Project | Investigative Record
Starbucks Corporation · Class Action · 2025
Starbucks Sued for Trafficking and Child Slavery in Its Brazilian Coffee Supply Chain
A federal class action filed in April 2025 alleges the world’s largest coffee chain knowingly profited from trafficked workers, including children, forced to harvest coffee under conditions Brazil’s own government called “slavery-like.”
Critical Severity
TL;DR
Starbucks, the world’s largest coffee chain with $3.2 billion in net profit in 2022, built its empire on a Brazilian supply chain riddled with trafficking, debt bondage, and child forced labor. Workers, including a minor child, were recruited by predatory labor brokers called Gatos, transported 16 hours from their communities, and dumped on remote coffee plantations where they worked 11-hour days with no water, no bathrooms, no safety equipment, and wages systematically stolen through fraudulent accounting. Brazil’s own Ministry of Labor rescued these workers and officially classified their conditions as human trafficking for labor exploitation. Starbucks knew. Its own auditing program certified many of these farms. It received complaint after complaint and issued statements promising action. It did nothing. This is not a supply chain failure; it is a business model built on exploitation.
Demand that Starbucks pay restitution to every worker rescued from its supply chain, and stop buying coffee from farms on Brazil’s Dirty List immediately.
📈 Key Numbers
$3.2B
Starbucks net profit, 2022
$96M
CEO Brian Niccol paid in first 4 months
3,700+
Workers found in slavery-like conditions on coffee farms, 1996–2023
316
People rescued from slavery-like conditions in coffee cultivation, 2023 alone
40%
Starbucks’ Brazil coffee imports sourced from Cooxupe, 2021–2023
2,160
Cases filed against Starbucks with the NLRB over 24 years
$106/mo
Average monthly income of Mexican coffee farmers supplying Starbucks
88+
Children rescued from slave-like labor in coffee industry, 2004–2022
⚠️ Core Allegations
Core Allegations
What Starbucks is accused of · 8 points
▼
| 01 | Eight plaintiffs, including a minor child, were trafficked by labor brokers called Gatos and forced to harvest coffee on Cooxupe farms that supply directly to Starbucks, with all workers officially classified by Brazil’s Ministry of Labor as victims of human trafficking for labor exploitation. | high |
| 02 | Starbucks knowingly sourced coffee from Cooxupe, its largest Brazilian Tier 1 supplier, for over a decade, even as multiple Cooxupe member farms appeared on Brazil’s government “Dirty List” for using slave labor. | high |
| 03 | Starbucks’ own C.A.F.E. Practices certification program certified farms later found using child and forced labor, including farms where workers were rescued in official government raids, demonstrating the program is structurally incapable of preventing the abuses it claims to prevent. | high |
| 04 | Workers on Starbucks-supplying farms were subjected to debt bondage from the moment of recruitment: Gatos charged for transportation, food, tools, fuel, and equipment rental, ensuring workers owed more than they earned and could not leave. | high |
| 05 | Starbucks publicly claimed 94.86% of its Brazilian coffee was ethically certified through C.A.F.E. Practices while knowingly relying on a program that conducted announced-in-advance audits and certified farms found by government inspectors to have slavery-like conditions. | high |
| 06 | Starbucks shifted $1.3 billion in profit into a Swiss subsidiary over a decade, the same subsidiary that manages C.A.F.E. Practices, enabling both tax avoidance and a layer of corporate insulation from the supply chain abuses below. | med |
| 07 | Child workers, some as young as 13, were found by government inspectors at farms with active Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices certification seals, working without safety equipment and living in overcrowded, unsanitary conditions. | high |
| 08 | Starbucks claims to hold its Tier 1 suppliers to strict conduct codes with the right to terminate business relationships for noncompliance, yet continued purchasing from Cooxupe throughout 2023 and 2024 while Cooxupe member farms were actively appearing on Brazil’s Dirty List. | high |
Regulatory Failures
How oversight broke down · 6 points
▼
| 01 | Brazil’s labor inspection budget was cut by 40% during the COVID-19 pandemic, hitting its lowest level in a decade. In Minas Gerais, 245 inspectors cover roughly 119,000 coffee plantations, approximately one inspector for every 486 farms. | high |
| 02 | From 2019 to 2022, Brazil dissolved its Ministry of Labor and drastically reduced resources for labor inspections nationwide, creating a years-long enforcement vacuum that coffee farm owners exploited to increase their use of forced labor. | high |
| 03 | A federal deputy whose father appeared twice on Brazil’s Dirty List for slave labor publicly lobbied in 2024 to eliminate enforcement raids and replace them with “guidance and dialogue” with producers, illustrating how politically protected slavery-like labor practices remain. | high |
| 04 | ADERE and Conectas Human Rights filed a formal complaint against Starbucks with the OECD’s National Contact Point in 2018, which was rejected on technical grounds. The OECD Watch noted the NCP applied an unreasonably high evidentiary standard and wrongly dismissed the complaint. | med |
| 05 | Plantation supervisors sent WhatsApp messages to workers ordering them to flee when inspectors arrived, while farm owners hid workers from authorities. This obstruction went unpunished because farms receive advance notice before official audits. | high |
| 06 | ADERE received direct threats after it published reports implicating Starbucks in Brazil’s forced labor supply chain. The threats began specifically after the Starbucks-focused report was released, with the source of the threats remaining unknown. | high |
Profit Over People
Revenue prioritized over worker safety · 5 points
▼
| 01 | Starbucks earned $3.2 billion in net profit in 2022. Its newest CEO received approximately $96 million in just four months. It would take a Mexican coffee farmer supplying Starbucks more than 7,000 years at current wages to earn what Niccol made in a single month. | high |
| 02 | Workers paid only R$ 3.43 for every 60 liters of coffee beans picked, an amount that could take an entire day to harvest, while also paying for rent, gas, food, water, and safety equipment that Brazilian law requires employers to provide for free. | high |
| 03 | If Starbucks actually enforced its own Supplier Code of Conduct on Cooxupe, compliance with labor and environmental standards would significantly increase Cooxupe’s costs. Turning a blind eye to exploitation directly reduces Starbucks’ coffee procurement costs. | high |
| 04 | Employers systematically cheated workers by falsely recording harvest weights. Workers at Sítio da Ilha were paid based on 60-kilogram measurements when their baskets actually held 80 kilograms, stealing roughly 25% of their earned wages on each load. | high |
| 05 | Cooxupe’s 2021 Management Report reveals Starbucks transferred R$ 973,665 directly to Cooxupe member farms as “award and recognition” payments, while those same farms were found by government inspectors to be using trafficking and forced labor. | med |
Worker Exploitation
Conditions on the ground · 8 points
▼
| 01 | Workers were forced to begin harvesting at 4 a.m. and worked 11 to 17-hour shifts with no protective equipment, no access to drinking water at worksites, no bathrooms at worksites, and no place to sit and eat meals, forcing them to eat on the ground in the middle of coffee plantations. | high |
| 02 | Workers lived in squalid conditions: multiple people sharing mattresses on floors of tiny rooms, a single unsanitary bathroom for over 20 people, no kitchen facilities, mice crawling through living spaces, and walls described as moldy and structurally dangerous. | high |
| 03 | John Doe I, a minor child, was found working barefoot in coffee fields after injuring his toe, carrying over 20 kilograms of coffee bags, facing risks of venomous snake and insect bites, extreme heat exposure, and the risk of deafness from operating heavy machinery without hearing protection. | high |
| 04 | Workers transported to remote plantations 16 hours by bus from their homes had no money for return transportation, making escape physically impossible. They were deliberately isolated to prevent them from leaving without earning enough to pay off their debts. | high |
| 05 | Brazil legally requires payment every 15 days. John Does IV and V worked for 40 consecutive days without any payment while their debt to the Gato grew daily through unlawful deductions for groceries, machinery fuel, oil, maintenance, and a kickback fee paid to the recruiter. | high |
| 06 | Farm workers were instructed to spray pesticides so toxic they are banned in the European Union, without protective clothing or equipment. The pesticides contaminated local drinking water and posed carcinogenic and acute toxicity risks to workers whose skin contact with the substances could be fatal. | high |
| 07 | One worker contracted Dengue Fever at Facienda Boa Vista and received no pay for the seven days he was bedridden. The Gato purchased medicine and added the cost to the worker’s debt, violating Brazilian law and deepening the debt bondage that kept him trapped. | med |
| 08 | Coffee harvesting machines sold without safety features such as locking buttons caused a wave of amputations of fingers, arms, and legs among workers. A 24-year-old worker died when he was pulled into a coffee picking machine. Workers, who often had to purchase or rent these machines from their employers, received no safety training. | high |
Public Health and Safety
Environmental and physical harm · 4 points
▼
| 01 | Brazil is the world’s leading pesticide user, and coffee production requires approximately 10 kilograms of pesticides per 1,000 kilograms of green coffee. Workers on Starbucks-supplying farms apply these chemicals without protective gear, resulting in documented skin toxicity and contamination of surface water and groundwater. | high |
| 02 | Between 2001 and 2015, coffee farming replaced roughly two million hectares of forest globally. Starbucks’ supply chain partners in Brazil have documented deforestation linked to coffee expansion, including satellite imagery showing significant forest loss at a C.A.F.E. Practices-certified Starbucks supplier farm after 2010. | med |
| 03 | Workers lived in quarters where drinking and bathing water was stored in old fuel tanks, exposing them to chemical contamination from petroleum residue in the vessels used to hold their only source of water. | high |
| 04 | Workers had no access to restrooms at worksites and were forced to defecate in forests near fellow workers, creating direct risks of disease transmission and constituting conditions that Brazil’s Ministry of Labor explicitly identified as degrading human dignity. | med |
Corporate Accountability Failures
Weak penalties, false promises, no change · 6 points
▼
| 01 | Starbucks issued statements pledging to “take immediate action” and “investigate” each time violations were exposed, but continued purchasing from Cooxupe throughout 2023 and 2024 even as Cooxupe member farms appeared on the April 2024 and April 2025 Brazilian Dirty Lists. | high |
| 02 | The National Consumers League filed a lawsuit in January 2024 alleging Starbucks falsely claims its coffee is “100% ethically sourced.” A California court in 2021 previously denied Starbucks’ motion to dismiss a similar consumer fraud case over ethical sourcing claims, which Starbucks settled, possibly to avoid discovery. | high |
| 03 | When confronted by Repórter Brasil in 2016, Starbucks refused to answer whether C.A.F.E. Practices audits had found labor violations at specific named farms, indicating the company had results it chose to conceal from the public. | med |
| 04 | Starbucks announced revisions to C.A.F.E. Practices in December 2024 acknowledging the program was failing, yet the company had spent years publicly and categorically claiming the certification guaranteed ethical sourcing during the exact years its plaintiffs were being trafficked and rescued. | high |
| 05 | Despite 2,160 labor cases filed against Starbucks at the NLRB over 24 years, including 63 complaints alleging over 1,200 violations as of January 2023, Starbucks continues to describe itself as a company that believes in “the pursuit of doing good” and that its “purpose goes far beyond profit.” | med |
| 06 | Starbucks’ C.A.F.E. Practices audits are announced at least 24 to 48 hours in advance, a design flaw that allows plantation supervisors to instruct workers to flee before inspectors arrive. This structurally compromised audit design means certification findings cannot be relied upon as evidence of actual conditions. | high |
Wealth Disparity
The economics of exploitation · 4 points
▼
| 01 | A 41% gap existed in 2020 between the average wage paid to coffee workers in Minas Gerais and the amount needed for a basic decent life in Brazil. Workers who survived on these wages were the same workers picking coffee that consumers paid premium prices for at Starbucks. | high |
| 02 | An estimated two-thirds of all coffee farm workers in Minas Gerais are hired informally, denying them minimum wage protections, overtime pay, access to social security retirement benefits, and the right to file labor complaints without risking retaliation. | high |
| 03 | Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol earned $96 million in four months. Mexican coffee farmers supplying Starbucks earn an average of $106 per month, well below the poverty line. Niccol’s four-month salary equals roughly 75,472 months, or 6,289 years, of a Mexican coffee farmer’s earnings. | high |
| 04 | Workers in Kenya’s James Finlay plantation, where Starbucks sourced tea, were paid the equivalent of $30 per week for 12-hour days, six days a week. Supervisors forced women to exchange sex for work. Starbucks did not offer remediation to impacted workers even after stopping purchases from the plantation. | high |
The PR Machine
Greenwashing, suppression, and false claims · 5 points
▼
| 01 | Starbucks describes itself as a company that believes “in the pursuit of doing good” and whose purpose “goes far beyond profit,” language that the plaintiffs’ complaint calls “not only false and misleading, but also extremely cruel and cynical” given the documented trafficking in its supply chain. | high |
| 02 | When a 2006 Sundance documentary exposed poverty in the Ethiopian coffee industry, Starbucks spent six months refusing interview requests, then tried to publicly discredit the film after its release. Starbucks also attempted to block Ethiopia from trademarking its own regional coffee names, which would have allowed Ethiopian farmers to earn more from their product. | med |
| 03 | Cooxupe farms publicly displayed the Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices certification logo on social media accounts, celebrating their ethical sourcing credentials, while simultaneously being investigated for or found guilty of forced labor, with some social media posts later deleted after the farms became subjects of public reporting. | med |
| 04 | Starbucks committed to a $100 million Global Farmer Fund for coffee farmer investment, later revised down to $50 million, while Starbucks’ executive vice president publicly described Cooxupe as an “incredibly important partner” and expressed pride in the relationship and plans for continued growth together. | med |
| 05 | In response to the 2025 Dirty List naming Cooxupe farms from which plaintiffs were rescued, Starbucks stated it monitors the Dirty List and has procedures to prevent purchasing from listed farms, a claim that is directly contradicted by the evidence that it sourced from Cooxupe throughout 2023 and 2024 while Cooxupe member farms were on the list. | high |
🕐 Timeline of Events
1888
Brazil abolishes formal slavery, the last country in the Americas to do so. Coffee plantation owners immediately develop new systems of debt bondage targeting freed Quilombo communities.
2004
Starbucks and Conservation International launch the C.A.F.E. Practices ethical sourcing certification program. Four labor inspectors are killed by gunmen on orders of rural landowners in the Unai Massacre, illustrating the lethal stakes of labor enforcement in Brazil’s coffee sector.
2012
Starbucks begins sourcing coffee from Cooxupe, the world’s largest coffee cooperative and Brazil’s largest coffee exporter, a relationship that continues through at least 2025.
2015
Government raids rescue workers, including 14 and 15-year-old children, from Fazenda Lagoa and Fazenda de Pedra in Minas Gerais. Slavery-like conditions found at multiple Starbucks-certified farms. Danwatch reports expose child labor in Starbucks’ supply chain.
2016
Repórter Brasil reports two farms in the Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices program were fined by Brazil’s Ministry of Labor for labor violations. Channel 4 Dispatches documents child labor at Guatemalan farms supplying Starbucks, including children as young as 11.
2018–2019
Brazilian government rescues 24 workers from two Starbucks C.A.F.E. Practices-certified farms, including Cedro II, where workers endured 17-hour shifts from 6am to 11pm. Thomson Reuters Foundation six-month investigation finds extensive slave labor running largely unchecked on farms still bearing Starbucks certification seals.
2022
159 workers rescued from modern slavery across 39 coffee farms in Minas Gerais. A minor and 25 workers rescued from Cedro-Chapadao and Conquista farms linked to Starbucks. 17 workers rescued from Mesas Farm carrying a C.A.F.E. Practices seal. Brazilian labor prosecutor charges Cooxupe for trafficking over 30 workers. NLRB has filed 63 complaints alleging 1,200 Starbucks labor violations in the US.
Jan. 2024
National Consumers League sues Starbucks in D.C. Superior Court alleging it falsely claims its coffee and tea sourcing is “100% ethical” despite documented forced labor, child labor, and sexual abuse at supplier farms.
June 2024
Ministry of Labor rescues 23 workers, including a 16-year-old, from slave-like conditions on seven coffee farms in Minas Gerais. Two of the three charged producers are Cooxupe members. Labor inspectors receive threatening messages. Plaintiffs John Does VI, VII, and VIII are among those rescued in this operation.
Dec. 2024
Starbucks acknowledges C.A.F.E. Practices is failing and announces revisions effective April 2025. Coffee Watch and China Labor Watch report child labor and 12-hour, seven-day workweeks at Starbucks-certified farms in China’s Yunnan Province.
April 2025
Class action complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by eight plaintiffs, including one minor, all officially found by Brazil’s Ministry of Labor to have been trafficked and forced to work under slavery-like conditions on Cooxupe farms supplying Starbucks. Farms from which plaintiffs were rescued appear on Brazil’s April 2025 Dirty List update.
💬 Direct Quotes from the Legal Record
QUOTE 1
Ministry of Labor on John Doe I’s working conditions
Worker Exploitation
“The work performed by this minor is ‘totally inappropriate for workers of his age group’ and constitutes ‘the worst form[] of child labor.'”
💡 Brazil’s own Ministry of Labor reached this conclusion after rescuing a child working barefoot on steep hillsides for Starbucks’ Tier 1 supplier, a finding Starbucks received and continued to ignore.
QUOTE 2
Ministry of Labor on physical conditions at Sítios Corrego do Jacu and Paquera
Worker Exploitation
“Human Trafficking for the Purposes of Labor Exploitation” with conditions that “degrad[e] human dignity.”
💡 These are the official government findings from the farm that supplied Starbucks’ Tier 1 supplier Cooxupe. The terminology is the most serious classification of labor abuse in Brazilian law.
QUOTE 3
Ministry of Labor on Sítio São João conditions
Worker Exploitation
“Workers were subjected to conditions that violated human dignity, in a flagrant disregard for worker protection standards.”
💡 São João Farm was part of Cooxupe. John Does IV and V were rescued from here and worked 40 days without pay. The farm is now on Brazil’s Dirty List.
QUOTE 4
Starbucks’ own public website, cited in complaint
PR Machine
“We Believe in the Pursuit of Doing Good. As it has been from the beginning, our purpose goes far beyond profit.”
💡 The complaint calls this language “not only false and misleading, but also extremely cruel and cynical,” given the documented trafficking and child slavery in Starbucks’ supply chain at the time this statement appeared on its website.
QUOTE 5
Starbucks EVP Michelle Burns on Cooxupe partnership (YouTube video)
Accountability Failures
“Cooxupé is an incredibly important partner to us… we couldn’t be more proud and also more grateful that we see a future together.”
💡 These words were spoken publicly while Cooxupe member farms were actively appearing on Brazil’s Dirty List for slave labor. The complaint uses this statement as direct evidence of the business venture between the two companies.
QUOTE 6
Starbucks response to 2025 Dirty List, published by Repórter Brasil
Accountability Failures
“We are actively engaged with farms to monitor adherence to our standards and each supply chain is required to undergo reverification regularly.”
💡 Starbucks made this claim in direct response to the April 2025 Dirty List, which included farms where plaintiffs in this lawsuit were rescued. The statement directly contradicts its actual purchasing behavior.
QUOTE 7
ADERE’s formal characterization of Starbucks’ role, cited in complaint
Corporate Accountability
“Validating a situation of omission and collusion with workers’ rights abuses in Brazil’s coffee farms” given the “widespread picture of human and labor rights violations.”
💡 This is the language ADERE, the Brazilian workers’ rights organization that rescued plaintiffs, used to formally describe what Starbucks’ reliance on C.A.F.E. Practices represents in practice.
QUOTE 8
Ministry of Labor workers’ exposure risks report, Sítio Coqueiros
Worker Exploitation
“Attack by venomous animals, such as snakes, centipedes, spiders and scorpions; poor posture; accidents with stumps, holes, branches of coffee trees and uneven terrain; development of musculoskeletal problems due to intense physical effort.”
💡 This is the official government risk assessment of conditions at a Cooxupe farm supplying Starbucks, where workers received no safety training, no protective gear, and no medical examinations before beginning hazardous work.
💬 Commentary
Did Starbucks know this was happening?
▼
Yes, the evidence is overwhelming. Starbucks received formal government complaints, multiple investigative journalism reports from Repórter Brasil, Danwatch, Thomson Reuters Foundation, and Channel 4, direct notifications from worker advocacy groups including ADERE, and had its own C.A.F.E. Practices certification team visiting Cooxupe in November 2021 and June 2024. The complaint argues that either Starbucks is lying about actively monitoring its supply chain, or it knowingly continued sourcing from suppliers it knew were using trafficking and forced labor. There is no innocent explanation for a decade of documented harm and continued purchasing.
What is the C.A.F.E. Practices program and why did it fail?
▼
C.A.F.E. Practices is Starbucks’ proprietary ethical sourcing certification, operated through a Swiss subsidiary and audited by third-party firm SCS Global Services. It failed for structural reasons: audits are announced 24 to 48 hours in advance, allowing farm managers to instruct workers to hide from inspectors. The certification covers hundreds of checkpoints but has consistently certified farms that government inspectors later found using child and forced labor. The complaint argues the program functions primarily as a marketing tool rather than an enforcement mechanism, giving consumers false confidence and providing Cooxupe farms cover to continue illegal practices.
Who are the Gatos and how does the trafficking system work?
▼
Gatos, literally “cats” but meaning “catchers,” are illegal labor brokers who travel to impoverished Quilombo communities in the north of Minas Gerais and recruit workers with false promises of good pay and safe conditions. They advance money for transportation and food, which immediately creates a debt. Workers are then transported 16 hours by bus to remote southern plantations, where they discover the actual conditions are far worse than promised. With no money for return transportation and debts growing daily through charges for tools, fuel, food, and equipment rental, workers are physically trapped. This system has been repeatedly found illegal by Brazilian courts and the Ministry of Labor, yet has operated continuously and openly across the coffee sector.
Is this lawsuit legitimate and what is it actually asking for?
▼
The lawsuit is filed in U.S. federal court under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which explicitly grants U.S. courts extraterritorial jurisdiction over trafficking cases and allows civil suits against companies that knowingly benefit from forced labor. The eight named plaintiffs all have Ministry of Labor inspection reports documenting their specific conditions, all farms where they worked have appeared on Brazil’s official Dirty List, and all cases were investigated and formally designated as trafficking by Brazilian federal authorities. The plaintiffs are represented by International Rights Advocates, an experienced human rights litigation firm. They seek compensatory and punitive damages, injunctive relief to stop retaliation, and class certification to represent thousands of similarly situated workers.
Why can’t Brazilian workers sue Starbucks in Brazil?
▼
Brazilian law does not currently provide a mechanism for workers to seek civil damages from a foreign parent company for supply chain abuses. The plaintiffs also face documented risks of violent retaliation from the Gatos who trafficked them, the farm owners, and anyone connected to the Cooxupe network. These communities, which descended from escaped enslaved people, have limited political and legal power relative to the entrenched coffee industry interests in Minas Gerais. The U.S. TVPRA was specifically designed to allow cases exactly like this one: holding U.S. corporations accountable in U.S. courts for extraterritorial forced labor abuses they knowingly benefited from.
Is this just a Brazil problem or does Starbucks do this elsewhere?
▼
The complaint documents a global pattern. In Kenya, supervisors at a Starbucks tea supplier forced women to exchange sex for work. In Guatemala, five of seven farms investigated by Channel 4 Dispatches in 2022 were linked to Starbucks and employed children as young as 11 carrying nearly 100-pound coffee bags. In China’s Yunnan Province, undercover investigators found child labor and 12-hour, 7-day workweeks at C.A.F.E. Practices-certified farms. In Mexico, Starbucks importers hired armed civilians to violently suppress worker protests. In Uganda, 48 to 51% of young boys worked in coffee farming. In India, bonded labor has been documented at farms linked to Starbucks suppliers. This is a pattern, not an outlier.
What happened to the children rescued from these farms?
▼
The complaint describes that minor plaintiff John Doe I, rescued in 2024, suffered serious injury and trauma. He had been working barefoot with injured feet, carrying loads over 20 kilograms, exposed to heat, machinery noise risks, and venomous animals, all while in debt bondage that left him earning nothing. The physical and psychological harm from these experiences is recognized in the complaint’s claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Workers generally received bus fare home and unpaid wages as part of Ministry of Labor enforcement, but no compensation for the trauma they endured. Starbucks has not offered any remediation to any of the workers rescued from its supply chain.
What can I do to prevent this from happening again?
▼
Concrete actions you can take: (1) Stop purchasing Starbucks products until the company publicly commits to cutting ties with all Cooxupe farms on Brazil’s Dirty List and pays restitution to rescued workers. (2) Contact Starbucks directly at 1-800-782-7282 or via its website to demand accountability. (3) Share this case publicly. Media and consumer pressure are historically the only forces that have compelled Starbucks to act on supply chain abuses. (4) Support the legal teams: International Rights Advocates (iradvocates.org) and ADERE in Brazil are doing the frontline work. (5) Contact your Congressional representatives and ask them to support stronger mandatory supply chain due diligence legislation that would hold U.S. companies legally responsible for forced labor in their supply chains regardless of how many layers of middlemen stand between them and the abuse.
💡 Explore Corporate Misconduct by Category
Corporations harm people every day — from wage theft to pollution. Learn more by exploring key areas of injustice.
- 💀 Product Safety Violations — When companies risk lives for profit.
- 🌿 Environmental Violations — Pollution, ecological collapse, and unchecked greed.
- 💼 Labor Exploitation — Wage theft, worker abuse, and unsafe conditions.
- 🛡️ Data Breaches & Privacy Abuses — Misuse and mishandling of personal information.
- 💵 Financial Fraud & Corruption — Lies, scams, and executive impunity.
