UKAS: Human Trafficking Good, Calling Us Out On It Bad

The continued fallout from Matt Gantley‘s disastrous management of the UK’s sole accreditation body, UKAS, continues.

First comes a post on LinkedIn from UKAS promoting Gantley’s “PRIDE” initiative which intends to present UKAS as a “diverse” company. The press release had to utilize a stock photo (taken from Dreamtimes) of a Black office worker because, apparently, UKAS couldn’t find any actual Black people working in their office.

Here’s a recent photo of the UKAS office staff, to see if you can spot any people of color:

Then came a UKAS post bragging about its dedication to being a good global citizen, to which I replied with a copy of an ISO certificate issued to Top Glove in Malaysia, which has been found to be using forced slave labor and engaged in human trafficking. That certificate features prominently the logo of UKAS. Gantley and UKAS have refused to take action to have their logo removed from Top Glove certificates, nor those of Chinese companies engaged in genocide against Uyghur Muslims in that country.

As a reward, my post was removed and I received the usual anti-bullying warning from LinkedIn:

I’m not sure what’s worse, Matt Gantley refusing to withdraw UKAS from supporting companies that engage in international crimes against humanity, or spending his days greasily mashing the “REPORT POST” button on LinkedIn to ensure no one can expose him.

Full disclosure: I probably had it coming, since I referred to Gantley as a “snake-egg hatcher.” I’m not even sure what a snake-egg hatcher is, but I just thought it was funny. Apparently, the snake-egg hatching field is a sensitive one, and calling someone a snake-egg hatcher without proof is “bullying.” I’ll accept that.

The ridiculous brouhaha is a pitch-perfect representation of the greater problems of corruption and scandal within the ISO certification industry. Companies like UKAS and IQNet and BSI and Bureau Veritas can certify and accredit companies engaged in outright crimes, including human trafficking, and bribery, and demand that any discussion of their activities remains “collegial.” If you happen to call them out on the reality of these horrors, they run to the “bullying” trope and clutch their pearls like Ray Battlesbee being asked a difficult question.

Because for companies like UKAS, revealing the act of helping criminals win market share is far, far worse than the actual act of helping criminals win market share.

[Image credit: Alien egg by Julio Cesar via Sketchfab]