DEERFIELD, IL — U.S. construction equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, headquartered in Deerfield, has been working with a China-based supplier of clothing items that participates in a coercive labor program known as, “Xianjian Aid,” according to a report from Axios. It is against federal law to import products made through forced labor.
Patch has reached out to Caterpillar representatives in both Deerfield and Beijing for response to this report.
Summit Resource International, the exclusive wholesaler of Caterpillar-branded men’s and women’s clothing to retail, received multiple shipments of tens of thousands of pounds of jackets and trousers from the clothing companies linked to the illegal labor practices between August 2019 and June 2020, according to research compiled by Worker Rights Consortium, and reviewed by Axios for its report.
The news comes on the heels of a recent report that Caterpillar’s profits are down 46 percent and revenue has fallen nearly $4 billion during the coronavirus pandemic. Caterpillar made Deerfield the location of its corporate headquarters in 2017 at 510 Lake Cook Road.
- The Xinjiang Aid program takes former detainees, as well as Uighurs from surrounding villages, and puts them to work in factories where they are often subject to political indoctrination, Chinese language classes (part of a region-wide effort to weaken Uighur cultural identity through reducing their reliance on the Uighur language), and extremely tight surveillance under the constant supervision of security guards.
- Tens of thousands of workers have been separated from their families and sent to work in factories in distant provinces under similar conditions.
Under its human rights policy on its website, Caterpillar states it is “committed to respecting recognized human rights principles aimed at promoting and protecting human rights in the countries in which we operate. We recognize that governments are ultimately responsible for establishing the legal framework to protect human rights within their jurisdictions.”
The policy goes on to list the following practices:
- We [Caterpillar] do not condone and strive to eliminate all forms of forced labor, child labor, and discrimination in the workplace;
- We work to establish safe and healthy working conditions;
- We value diversity as a foundational key to the success of our business strategy;
- We seek to compensate our employees fairly and competitively where they work; and,
- We respect principles of freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining.
Patch will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.
