Subaru calls for suppliers to affirm “human rights”

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Fuji Heavy Industries (the parent company of automaker Subaru) has demanded of its suppliers to uphold “human rights and international standards of behavior.”

“Our supply chain network has been made aware of our policy and expectations,” it said in a statement on Friday.

The Subaru statement came in response to a Reuters investigation of factory conditions at Subaru and its suppliers in Japan published last week. The report found widespread employment of asylum seekers and other cheap foreign laborers from Africa and Asia.

Those workers complained of working conditions that included lower wages than Japanese laborers doing equivalent work, a lack of safeguards and abuses at the hands of labor brokers who charge up to a third of their wages to place them in Subaru-related jobs, Reuters found.

Fuji Heavy said it “expects all employees to be treated fairly, with dignity and respect and to be provided with appropriate workplace protections.” It said its policies called for respect for “human rights and international standards of behavior and the ethical standards of our stakeholders.”