Labor Inequalities and The Issue of Modern Slavery

Introduction

To delve into the many labor inequalities across the globe we must discover the roots and causes. For first world countries such as the United States, labor inequalities fall under the umbrella of income inequalities as well as a lack of opportunity. Examining the layers of inequality within the global labor force reveals much more oppressive inequalities. These labor inequalities come in many forms such as modern slavery, debt bondage, human trafficking, and forced labor, but it is difficult to point fingers as to why it still exists. Historical inequalities were rampant and aided the development of the slave trade which is of the largest forms of labor inequality. Colonialism's traditional form used to constitute a way for nations to grow their power and influence. During this era, it was accepted that military force could be used to gain resources from foreigners and their land. Human labor wasn’t seen as an asset, but rather a variable that affects production yields. The colonists had no desire or need to fend off human suffering, and its victims were often uneducated and couldn't speak up or write off their issues. With the introduction of globalization, our nations united in markets and in organization to rid of practices such as colonialism and imperialism. The free market expanded to every nation it could reach, leaving room for more inequalities to be perpetrated.

Countries no longer invade foreign settlements and acquire their land for economic gain, but their method still reverberates the globe. Instead, multinational corporations and global lenders use their own political and economic control to influence foreigners for their economic growth. Imperialism still exists in its final form called neocolonialism. Some key features of neocolonialism is (1) A trend of economic growth characterized by a heavy reliance on the export of primary products, (2) a system of forced labor for agricultural resources, and (3) a global supply chain governed and regulated by multinational corporations, traders, and intermediaries. Aa nation subjected to neocolonialism has its economic system directed from the outside and therefore, its political policy is controlled by outside sources. The use of this regime is to exploit developing nations rather than develop them.

Economic dependencies formed with these nations giving them no choice but to return for additional aid which adds to their national debt. These corporations take over the land and become a major source of employment thus leaving their economy and its people dependent on the actions of the corporation. When the imperial power has much more capital power they can dictate government policy in the neo-colonized state.

Multinational corporations may often begin operations in another nation, but that doesn’t always mean that they are the source of exploitation. Often they begin operations in the land that don’t necessarily belong to them exploiting the land and the people who abide in it. The modern colonizer decides to add to their supply chain and build factories, manufacturing facilities, and exploit the land and farms to liquidate all of the assets within the land. Now they can only do this of course with permission from the government of the land which is why they prey on underdeveloped nations that are weak and in need of aid. This practice keeps the practice of keeping wealth flowing from impoverished nations to the ruling class of the first world alive.

Neo-colonialism is often the reason many labor inequalities and exploitations exist in a foreign land. On the surface level, neo-colonialism seems to refer to corporations setting up manufacturing facilities that need local workers to operate, but this is often not the case. Often neo-colonialism perpetuates the current inequalities within a foreign land. Their economy is strangled by lenders creating empty promises and one-sided deals that are created solely to drain the nation's resources as quickly as possible. Many point the finger at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. After WW2 they began to offer loans to poor underdeveloped countries in desperate need of aid. This promise would only be made if the suffering nation would agree to privatize their economy and allow corporations to access their materials, and they would reluctantly accept in efforts to develop their economy and basic infrastructure.

The workers themselves are racialized and in a position where they are forced to accept bargains which lead to debt bondage out of desperation. Coincidentally their governments must do the same with these lenders and corporations to keep their economy afloat (Bonacich 2008). As we all know now, the infrastructure of these nations was not developed as they had hoped, and their economy has only faltered. Now they suffer some of the worst income, labor, and environmental inequalities in the world. The omnipresence of slavery in the modern age is entirely motivated by the ability to produce significant profits at almost no real risk while the economy and its participants accept the victims suffering. Fortunately for these companies, when they are caught exploiting the land and its people, there is only a brief outrage, an empty promise is made, and consumers return to purchasing their products.

A Case For Nestle’s Supply Chains

Ghana’s “gold coast” was once the center of Africa’s slave trade, and in some ways, the practice continues. Their instability began when their government led by Kwame Nkrumah was overthrown by a coup d'etat. There is speculation that this coup was plotted and approved by governments in Britain as well as the United States under Lyndon B. Johnson. Since then the land has been led by instability with records of famine and drought. They had inflation levels in the triple digits and they were in dire need of aid. They went on an effort of economic reform thorough the IMF that has since led to positive structural reforms that also, unfortunately, perpetuate modern slavery. The IMF now has Ghana under control and threatens to stop giving loans unless they continue to abide by what they desire.

One of the biggest companies that keeps slavery alive in Ghana is Nestle with its massive and increasing demand for cocoa. Cocoa harvesting is very labor-intensive and has a high demand for jobs, but requires low skilled work which is why children are often targeted. Around 2 million children are engaged in cocoa farming in Ghana and Cote d’Ivoire on farms that are part of Nestle’s supply chain. These two locations alone produce about 60% of the world's cocoa and the labor required to harvest it is dangerous and abolishes children's chances of pursuing education. Children work on cocoa fields for over 8 hours per day swinging machetes, burning fields, spraying pesticides, and lifting bags of cocoa which are over 100 pounds. Workers are not supplied with enough chemical pesticides so they must buy their own from China which has instructions they cannot understand. These chemicals do not have a place to be stored and often find themselves stored in workers' homes. The spraying tanks are even washed in water sources that communities draw drinking water from. With an estimated 30 percent growth in global demand for cocoa in the next 5 years this problem may get worse.

In a study conducted by the Fair Labor Association, they examined Nestle’s cocoa farms along the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Nestle has been promising to rid of child slave labor within their supply chain as far back as 2001, but the study in 2012 proves otherwise. The Ivory Coast is the world's largest producer of cocoa and the largest exporter as well. The problem with Nestle’s supply chain is that it is not entirely transparent. To moderate and regulate the ethical production of cocoa, Nestle created The Nestle Cocoa Plan, but only 20% of their cocoa farming is under this plan. The other 80% corresponds to a standard supply chain that isn’t transparent and as well maintained as it should be. This, unfortunately, leads to about half of their cocoa production being untraceable.

This is not the first of Nestle’s wrongdoings. They are also under fire for forced labor, trafficking, and child labor within their seafood production sites. A case conducted by Verite exposed the inequalities within the seafood industry in Thailand which highlights deceptive recruitment practices (Verite 2015). Workers had been subjected to these recruitment practices in their home countries, then transported to Thailand under inhumane conditions. Some were led into debt bondage and exposed to exploitative working conditions such as no days off and forced overtime. The workers interviewed stated that they make about $10 a day before fees and deductions, while they paid around $400-$500 for the job itself as a recruitment cost. The recruitment process was done without going through the legal immigration and labor procedures defined by Thailand’s Alien Employment Act.

The Many Faces of Inequality

The exploitative nature of slavery has never changed, its face has only changed its mask. In 2016, an estimate of 40.3 million people were victims of modern slavery (Alliance 2017). The Trafficking in Persons Protocol defines trafficking in human beings under three terms. The “act” refers to an act of either recruiting, transporting, harboring or receiving a person. The second term is “purpose” which is the particular reason the act occurs, whether it be for forced labor or exploitation. Finally, the “means” is how the person is convinced to give up their rights, whether it be the use of force, abduction, fraud, coercion, debt bondage, etc.

Traditional slavery was usually entirely forced while modern slavery is often contractual and temporal and categorized as forced labor. Forced labor differs from slavery because it entails coercion under the threat of any penalty which has not been offered voluntarily (Kartha 2017). Most victims suffer numerous forms of coercion to prevent them from ridding of their debts. Around 24 percent of workers had their wages withheld by threats of non-payment, 17 percent encountered threats of physical violence and 16 percent of actual physical violence. Threats also include denial of food, shelter or water, manipulation of debts, and the threat of deportation. In 2016, of the 40.3 million victims of modern slavery, 24.9 million of them were in forced labor. Within these 24.9 million forced laborers, 16 million of them operate within the private economy which generates illegal profits of about $150 billion annually.

Forced labor can be imposed by the state with work enforced by public authorities, military, and even prison labor in some cases. An estimate of 4.1 million people were victims of state-imposed forced labor. This includes the recruitment of citizens to work for economic development, military workers performing work unrelated to the military, and prisoners forced to work against their will.

The most prevalent form of slavery today is debt bondage. In North Korea 1 in 10 people are bound by state-enforced labor after they are recruited against their will. This involved children working in agriculture with the schools receiving payment instead of the children. If they fail to participate they would be punished within the school itself, but this could be avoided through bribes. Adults partake in communal labor where they work for up to 100 days in a row, and if they refuse they have a cut in food rations.

When comparing all forms of slavery, debt bondage confines more victims than all other forms of slavery combined. Debt labor/bondage is a predatory interlinking of labor and credit agreement. The victims often enter loan agreements with parties that are seeking to exploit their labor. When the party who lacks any assets seeks said loan, they often pledge their labor to pay it off. Since there are power imbalances between the two parties, the debtor is often exploited so severely it develops into slavery. Victims find themselves working for extremely low wages, and repaying interest rates of 10 to 20 percent per month. Sometimes up to half of the debtor's wages are taken for debt repayment, and the loaner has the power to make deductions for poor work performance, or whatever they see necessary. When workers can’t afford to live on this measly wage, basic commodities like food and clothes require more loans which adds to the debt. If the debt is not repaid it can last a lifetime and be passed to future generations. Debt bondage frequently entails workers paying recruitment fees to secure a job along with its documents, training, permits, and travel fees.

The topic of slavery and human trafficking is already recognized as extremely unequal, but there exist even deeper inequalities within the system. Most victims of human trafficking happen to be female and children. This is because most victims detected globally are trafficked for sexual exploitation. In a grouping of women, men, girls, and boys, women make up 49% and girls make up 23%, to a total of about 72% of detected victims of trafficking in persons being female (UNODC 2018). About 99% of victims of forced sexual labor are female (ILO). Another form of modern slavery is an unconsented forced marriage that targets women and girls. In 2016, around 15.4 million people were living in marriage they had not consented to. More than a third of these victims are under the age of 18, and among these child victims, 44 percent were forced to marry before they were even 15 years old.

What We Can Do Today

For international business, slavery is extremely profitable. Modern slavery generates an estimated $150 billion in illegal profits annually (ILO 2016). The question often arises if multinational corporations have the capability of dictating labor standards through their supply chains. Even conscious and responsible corporations acknowledge how difficult and ineffective it is to accurately monitor their entire supply chain. When these multinational corporations are required to certify that their suppliers are following code, they cannot entirely rely on the third-party verifiers, but this is a shoddy excuse.

One CEO named Andrew Forrest, who is also the founders of the Walk Free Foundation stated that he sent a letter to 3,000 suppliers of his company Fortescue Metals Group regarding modern slavery. When 50 suppliers failed to respond he launched investigations revealing slavery practices within his supply chain. He said the cost of this investigation was “next to nothing” (Stringer 2018). This goes to show that the economic motives of multinational corporations are a powerful force in driving slavery (Machailova 2018). The study conducted by Verite within Nestle’s seafood supply chain was contracted by Nestle themselves. With this so-called “next to nothing” cost, corporations should follow in Nestle’s path of conducting supply chain investigations wherever they can.

Due to codes like The Modern Slavery Act being enacted, corporations have faced the inequalities within their supply chain, helping to bring more focus to what we are doing as a dominant society. In this act, organizations are required to produce slavery and trafficking statements that detail their efforts to eradicate it within their supply chain. Statements are now required annually and failure to comply could lead to fines, potential prison sentences, supply chain disruption, and reputational harm. In a survey of 46 leading brands and retailers, twice the amount of CEO’s has become more active addressing modern slavery since The Modern Slavery Acts has come into place. Around 58% of companies have increased communications with suppliers addressing modern slavery as an important issue. Since businesses are operating for profits, they are not just doing this out of the goodness of their hearts, addressing modern slavery is becoming a critical issue. Around 97% of companies stated the risk of public exposure to inequalities found within their supply chain. The answer to all this exploitation is not protests and boycotts, but unity. When we all become citizens of the same world and take a stance of respect based on human equality, we can progress towards a better future. This also involves a strong focus on conserving our ecology as it is not expandable. Global labor plays a major role in the introduction of unnatural deforestation, pollution, and degradation of the environment, to nations with weak environmental laws. Our nation can work together with the environmental and business organization to enforce more ethical labor and environmental practice within their global supply chain.

Reflection

With such a profitable form of labor, it is hard to say slavery will end any time soon.

Slavery still upholds its roots within our world in forced labor, human trafficking, sexual exploitation, and debt bondage, but we could work towards eradication through multi-national corporations exposing the evils within their supply chain. Part of the reason these inequalities exist in the first place is because of the high demand for labor within these global markets that spawned when globalization was introduced to the economy. There were once hopes that globalization would expand the economies of poorer less fortunate nations, not cause them to falter further. Corporations could work to launch investigations of their supply chain to increase transparency. There are many forms of exploitation that we cannot combat as a first world country such as forced marriage and sex trafficking, but exposing the home of the inequalities through the supply chain can lead to exposure to all of its forms. Codes like the Modern Slavery Act 2015 should be made in America which requires corporations to release annual assessments on their efforts to eradicate modern slavery from their supply chains. Consumers can rid of consumption habits and protest companies that continue to utilize unethical labor.

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the rabid consumption borne by our developed countries brings more consequences than just labor inequalities to other nations. There are many victims borne by our consumption globally. Another victim of this final stage of imperialism is the environment. When corporations are facing tough pollution standards, tax laws, and regulations, they can cut costs by moving operations overseas. When we view these corporations as colonizers the ecological destruction becomes much clearer. These corporations have so much power and influence that they are the gatekeeper of these exploitations. They are the ones with the best chance to infiltrate the global labor market and work to eradicate modern slavery. Many forms of policy can keep these corporations in order but if they decide to take the initiative they could accelerate the process towards a more humane world.