By Guo Wuchu
Forced labor has always been associated with slavery. The history of cotton production in the U.S. is soaked in the blood of African slaves. The four million African slaves that were trafficked to work on U.S. plantations contributed to the accumulation of wealth in America. Slave owners were estimated to have earned $14 trillion from their slaves.
With the release of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, slavery was abolished in the U.S., but the specter of forced labor continues to haunt another huge community: immigrants. The majority of the people trafficked to the U.S. come from some 40 countries and regions around the world, and they remain unprotected by labor and employment laws and regulations on U.S. territory. Most of them toil for a living in domestic service, sex industry, agricultural production and sweatshops amid fear of deportation. Each year according to statistics, nearly 100,000 people are trafficked to the U.S. for forced labor, but only more or less 1,000 are lucky enough to get rescued. At present, over 500,000 people are reportedly living in modern slavery with wages and benefits far below mandatory standards.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security admits that forced labor is not uncommon in the country, and the victims can be both domestic and foreign citizens. Although the U.S. government is tight-lipped about its dark secret, it cannot pretend nothing happens with the volumes of evidence. From 2004 to 2005, Global Horizons Manpower, a California-based company, allegedly trafficked more than 400 Thais to work on farms in Hawaii and Washington, with each victim ripped off a commission of as much as $21,000.
In 2005, a Thai named Chinnawat paid $11,250 for going to North Carolina. Upon arrival, he was crammed into a motel with five or six roommates, and then moved to a barn in filthy conditions. Within weeks, he lost his job and pay, but was forced to stay on the farm. To intimidate Chinnawat, the contractor cleaned his gun in his presence, threatening to inflict harm on him and his family should he attempt to escape.
In the U.S., capital is concentrated in major cities such as New York and Los Angeles, so do the majority of sweatshop headquarters. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, there are more than 20,000 sweatshops across the country in the apparel industry alone, where legislative loopholes are exploited and government regulations are circumvented. Vulnerable groups are being exploited, and even children cannot be spared either. The U.S. is the only country that has yet to approve the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In U.S. laws, the minimum age for agricultural jobs is still set at 16. According to a report by a U.S. government department in 2018, even though child farm workers represent only an estimated 5.5% of working children, more than half of the work-related deaths among children occur in the agricultural sector. Between 2003 and 2016, 237 children died while working in agriculture, four times more than in other industries.
Throughout the years, the International Labor Organization (ILO) Committee of Experts on the Application of Conventions and Recommendations has been expressing concerns about the high rate of workplace accidents on U.S. farms involving children, and has repeatedly urged the U.S. government to take actions to address this situation. The plight of child labor has been a recurring labor rights issue in the U.S.
Racial discrimination makes U.S. employment even more problematic. African Americans are “the last to be hired and the first to be fired”. The unemployment rate of African Americans is twice as high as that of the White. A significant portion of African Americans have no health insurance coverage, and the unemployment rate of African Americans and Latinos hit an all-time high during COVID-19, with more than half of adult African Americans jobless.
The U.S. has the worst performance in fulfilling international labor obligations. To date, it has ratified only 14 international labor conventions and only two of the eight core ILO conventions, which pales in comparison to most countries in the world. Even for the limited conventions ratified and turned into domestic laws, the U.S. has done a poor job in delivering on its commitments.
Labor rights violation has been a serious problem in the U.S. both historically and in the present-day context. As a matter of fact, the U.S. falls far short of meeting the standards for safeguarding labor rights and interests, either on paper or in practice. Instead of expressing hypocritical concerns about the labor conditions of other countries, the U.S. should reflect on its serious labor rights violations and improve the well-being of its own workers.
(Guo Wuchu is a commentator on international affairs.)
