Where's the List of Slave-Made Goods the Department of Labor Promised?

by Ambassador Mark Lagon

categories: Government & Legal Efforts on Human Trafficking, Human Trafficking Awareness, Labor Trafficking and Trade

Published July 27, 2009 @ 12:31PM PT

In December 2008, I had the honor of attending the signing of the Trafficking Victims Protection Act reauthorization - named after British abolitionist William Wilberforce - in the Oval Office. When the original 2000 Act was revised by Congress in 2005 our legislators mandated that the Department of Labor create a list of products made by forms of human trafficking: forced labor and onerous child labor.

The list would identify problem products (such as seafood, steel, textiles, etc.) and the countries where they were produced. Some such products would not be for export; other products listed would be exported, and of those a good number exported to the United States.

Such a list of slave labor products would provide consumers and shareholders leverage to fight slavery. If informed of which products coming into the United States might be tainted by slave labor, consumers could use their buying power and stockholders in companies importing such goods could use their voice to fight the problem.  Both remain powerful forces even with a worldwide recession and the shrinking of citizens' investment nest-eggs.

Still, four years later - four! - there's no list.

Why? The Department of Labor, under the leadership of Secretary Elaine Chao until last January, said the requirement was an unfunded mandate - as they didn't have enough people to put on the task absent any extra funding from Congress.

Congress unwisely put no deadline on the mandate in the 2005 legislation, then gave the Department a luxurious one year to produce it with the enactment of the latest December 2008 revision of the landmark 2000 anti-slavery act.

But the list exists. While I was still the anti-trafficking ambassador, a public hearing had been held for information and a draft list was fashioned.

Unenthusiastic about anything unhelpful to business, Chao made sure that list didn't get finished on her watch.

I saw the draft list before I left government in January. I know the list has been examined by US Embassies and US diplomats loathe to complicate our relations with other governments by suggesting slave labor exists in certain sectors of their economies.

Some businesses won't like that the list identifies products and source countries, but not businesses names. So if Companies X, Y, and Z use slave labor in a producing Product P in Country C, they'd besmirch the reputation of all other companies producing Product P in Country C.

Yet that's great. It puts pressure on all companies in a sector to make sure they don't have slave labor in their supply chain.

There is every reason to think that the new Administration will set things right. But every citizen who wants to see slavery stamped out should want the earliest release of this list - mandated no less by a pro-business Republican-controlled Congress in 2005.

Please email the new Secretary of Labor, Hilda Solis. Tell her it's high time to reverse the foot-dragging of the past. Ask her and the public servants of her Department to give the American people this list - to empower them to insist on a marketplace clean of goods made on the backs of slaves.

Then instead of fearing that globalization leads inexorably to people being turned into mere commodities, dehumanized, the obverse will occur. Market forces can be applied to force the globalized economy to transparently find slavery and root it out.

What's the next step after the list? Sticks and carrots. If slavery is found in the supply chain, the producer needs to be in danger of losing profit, going out of business and, if complicit, of going to jail. Steel and biofuels from Brazil, rubber and shrimp from Thailand, cotton from Uzbekistan - these all deserve scrutiny, among dozens of sectors and source countries.

Yet, much can be done by rewarding sectors free of slavery - even those more complex than manufactured goods. We must find a way to certify that cocoa from West Africa, migrant labor recruiters in South Asia, and hotels in havens for sex tourists from Costa Rica to Kenya to Cambodia are all free of slavery.

Hopefully those certified would receive a leg up from decent consumers rewarding them. This too would drive their competitors to make sure their sectors are not just clean because they will otherwise be held accountable, but because they'll make more money if they do the right thing.

However, a good first step is the list. Let Secretary Solis know you want it public and pronto.