Phillips Forced Labour and Human Trafficking Statement
1: Opening statement from senior management
Phillips Auctioneers Limited are committed to preventing forced labour and human trafficking from occurring within our business and our supply chains. To help ensure this, we continue to maintain practices that reflect the importance we place on the rights and wellbeing of our staff. We also extend these high standards to the business practices of our suppliers, which we monitor on an ongoing basis.
This statement sets out our practices for safeguarding against acts of forced labour and modern slavery.
2: Structure of the organisation
Phillips is an auctioneer of Fine Art and operates globally, with salerooms in New York, London and Hong Kong. As well as offering auctions across categories which include fine art, jewellery, design, and photographs, Phillips in association with Bacs and Russo conducts world-leading sales of luxury collector’s watches. Phillips also provides clients with a highly successful private sale service. Phillips employs 490 people worldwide. To find out more about the nature of our business, please go to https://www.phillips.com/about/.
In order to sell works of art on a global scale, we work with a range of suppliers who provide specialised shipping, storage, security and IT services.
3: Policy
As part of our commitment to combating forced labour and human trafficking, we have implemented a Modern Slavery Policy.
Our Modern Slavery Policy ensures that Phillips maintains employment practices that are compliant with the law. We offer remuneration which is consistent with legal norms and market practice, as well as fair and safe working conditions for our employees and across our supply chains. To ensure our approach is globally consistent, we offer equality of employment in all countries in which we operate. We implement strict protocols to check the identity of our employees and ensure that they have the necessary rights to work before they undertake employment.
We ensure that our suppliers and employees are aware of our values and comply with the high standards we have established through our Modern Slavery Policy.
4: Due diligence
As part of our efforts to monitor and reduce the risk of slavery and human trafficking occurring within our supply chains and business, we undertake the following practices:
- assess, on an ongoing basis, areas of potential risk
- monitor any potential risk areas identified
- identify and action red flags
- expect our suppliers to comply with our Modern Slavery Policy
- open a direct line of communication between our employees and our Legal Department through our Whistleblowing Policy which is outlined in the Phillips Staff Handbook
In order to maintain best practice, we regularly review our procedures to guarantee that we are working efficiently and effectively to safeguard against forced labour and human trafficking.
5: Risk and compliance
Phillips continuously evaluates the nature and extent of any risk of exposure to forced labour and modern slavery occurring in our business. We have a zero-tolerance approach to forced labour and human trafficking within our supply chains. If we find evidence of such activity, we will immediately seek to terminate our relationship with the relevant supplier.
We have not to date found any evidence of activity that contravenes the values we have set out in our Modern Slavery Policy. Fortunately, our assessments indicate that we do not operate in high-risk sectors or locations. However, we remain diligent in implementing our policy and reviewing our practices to maintain a business, and supply chains, free from acts of modern slavery. This statement is made in accordance with section 54(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and constitutes Phillips' forced labour and human trafficking statement.