Human Trafficking in the US
David Batsone and Manpower, Inc. Team Up To Fight Trafficking
Published September 16, 2009 @ 01:00PM PT
World renowned journalist and anti-trafficking leader and activist David Batsone talks about the abolitionist efforts of Manpower, Inc. -- a super corporate ally in the fight against trafficking -- and the Not for Sale Campaign's upcoming Global Forum on Human Trafficking, where you can meet David Arkless of Manpower, Inc.
Like many of you, I travel quite frequently for work. And as I traipse about from one country to the next, I rarely take into consideration the various regulations that so many individuals must maneuver through when traveling abroad in search of employment. Individuals who have not been met with the same background, opportunities, and international status that life has so afforded me. As a business professional with an American passport and well established career, issues of contract, sponsorship, and work visas hardly ever cross my mind.
Recently I shared a cuppa joe with David Arkless, President of Government and Corporate Relations for Manpower, Inc., the world's leading employment agency. While David, like myself, rarely has to consider work contracts or restrictions on his personal movement across the globe, he is continuously striving to better understand the experience of those who do. He knows what the global talent pool looks like today: the industries that need it, the recruiters that find it, and the regulations that police it. As President of Government and Corporate Relations for the global leader and industry icon of labor recruiting, David is in an elite group of individuals who truly understand what the future of global labor will look like. He also understands how the laws regulating each country's labor recruiting can create ambiguity where coercive and manipulative labor recruiters find opportunity to thrive.
I am no stranger to the inspiring efforts of Manpower, Inc, first learning about their work while researching for my book, "Saving the Corporate Soul." I was impressed to discover Manpower's substantial commitment to combat human trafficking, where they've done so globally through the creation of the "Athens Ethical Principles."
In today's corporate world it is not uncommon for a company to create a major campaign to address a social issue. But it is rare to see a company take on an issue as extreme as human trafficking, and even more rare when that issue is intrinsically tied to that company's industry (a substantial amount of documented trans-national labor trafficking cases involve corruption, coercion, or misconduct by a labor recruiter on some level). Not only has David Arkless put Manpower at the forefront of the fight on human trafficking, but he is actively recruiting from the top 1,000 corporate leaders across the globe to join them in this fight.
During my brief coffee with David, I was inundated with enough ideas to fill another three books on labor trafficking alone. I left that meeting increasingly certain of two things. First, that we must look to the models set forth by David Arkless and Manpower if we are to end the exploitative labor practices of fraudulent recruiters within labor industries across our globe. And secondly, that I want every business person I've met to hear David present on the issues of labor in our world and the future of the global talent pool.
I am so pleased to offer you an opportunity to do the latter. This October 8th and 9th you can join David Arkless, along with the leading global experts on combating modern-day slavery, at the first Global Forum on Human Trafficking presented by the Not For Sale Campaign and Humanity United. David will present alongside individuals like Lou DeBaca, Ambassador-at-large to Monitor and Combat Human Trafficking in the U.S. State Department. I hope you can join me at this momentous event. After seeing the inspiration a single cup of coffee with David Arkless can hold, I can only imagine the impact of an entire forum!
Photo credit: kwalk628
What Fox News Doesn't Want You to Know About the ACORN Prostitution Scandal
Published September 13, 2009 @ 01:42PM PT
Some workers at ACORN offices in Baltimore and Washington DC made some pretty bad choices recently in front of an undercover film crew pretending to be a pimp and prostitute trying to buy a home. They didn't protest when the actors told them they wanted to bring thirteen 15-year-old girls from El Salvador into the country to sell in prostitution, helped them with creative ways to avoid the cops, and even suggested how to claim the girls as dependents on their taxes. However, there is a lot more to these videos and the media blitz behind them than meets the eye.
Fox News and other conservative media outlets would have you believe this is a story about sex trafficking. It's not. It's a story about race, class, prostitution, tax evasion, and serious ethical and legal concerns. In the edited versions of the videos, the actors and the ACORN employees discuss activities that could be classified as trafficking only about 1% of the time. The rest of the time they talk about prostitution, which the woman claiming to be a prostitute repeatedly says she is engaging in by her choice and keeping the money she makes (therefore, she is not a trafficking victim herself). The ACORN employees should have taken action when the actors talked about prostituting underage girls; not doing so was reprehensibly unethical and illegal. And since prostitution is illegal in both Maryland and DC, they shouldn't have condoned lying (and in some cases cheating) on taxes to support it. But Fox and the conservative media have twisted these videos to indicate ACORN as an organization was promoting child prostitution, which was never the case.
The videos are certainly an indictment of four ACORN employees, all of which have now been fired. But they are also an indictment of the conservative media outlets that push stories like this as a way to discredit and defund liberal organizations like ACORN under the guise of concern about sex trafficking. The sting was orchestrated by conservative filmmaker James O'Keefe who targeted a number of ACORN offices, with incriminating results found in two. It's clear the goal of the operation was nothing to do with preventing harm to children, and everything to do with finding ACORN employees willing to help a prostitute get housing and set up a business. From the perspective of the ACORN employees, they were helping a woman without education or resources set up a business to survive. From the perspective of we the taxpayers, they were helping a woman cheat on her taxes and earn income illegally through criminal activity. Had the woman been selling cocaine instead of sex, the legal and ethical implications would be similar. What the employees did was unethical, but it was about taxes, not trafficking, and it was a lot more complex and nuanced than Fox News is making it out to be.
The videos from Baltimore and DC are here below. Watch them for yourself, and then take a look at the way some news outlets have been covering them. It's a scandal for ACORN to be sure, but not one that's really about human trafficking.
Victory: Chipotle, Tomato Growers Commit to End Slavery
Published September 11, 2009 @ 06:20AM PT
Once again, Change.org members have spoken and a company has listened! Yesterday marked a huge victory for workers in the Florida tomato industry -- both the East Coast Growers and Packers company and Chipotle have agreed to work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) to implement penny-per-pound wage increases, supply chain transparency, and a code of conduct that prevents slavery. Thanks to the hundreds of Change.org members who sent letters to Chipotle asking them to take a stand against slavery!
Last week, Chipotle gave a detailed response to the petitions Change.org members were sending them, which was both sophisticated and honest (and therefore rare to hear from a corporate PR statement). They explained one of the problems in the very complicated tomato industry was that the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange (FTGE), a special-interest group for the industry, was blocking the payment mechanism, so Chipotle had no guarantee their extra money was actually reaching the workers. This week, however, East Coast Growers and Packers, one of Florida's largest tomato growers, agreed to pass on the cash and work with Chipotle and CIW. FTGE, which controlls massive portions of the industry, still hasn't removed their heads from their butts in order to talk with CIW, but I'm hoping the smell -- or a little more Change.org activism -- will drive them out soon.
This victory is huge not just because it will help prevent slavery and exploitation of tomato harvesters, but because the engagement of growers means that many companies have lost their excuse for inaction -- the claim that they couldn't know if they money was actually getting to the workers. Now, companies like Publix, Kroger, Sodexo, Aramark, Wendy's, Quizno's, Costco, and WalMart who have been shirking their basic responsibilties to support human rights and fair pay are on the hook for real; they better stand up against slavery or face the floods of petitions coming from the Change.org community.
You can thank and congratulate CIW, East Coast Growers and Packers, and Chipotle with a comment here. And you can also enjoy a thick, juicy burrito knowing that you're buying and biting into a company that stands with workers and against slavery ... with integrity.
Photo credit: Chipotle by Sunset by Soundman1024
Help End the Wage Theft Epidemic
Published September 09, 2009 @ 11:24AM PT
In the United States, wage theft -- employers illegally underpaying or financially exploiting employees -- has become an epidemic. This form of labor exploitation affects low-income workers, women, and immigrants disproportionally. For years the wage theft epidemic has spread, but now we have some hopeful opportunities to protect workers from exploitation.
Author and founder of Interfaith Worker Justice Kim Bobo describes the startling rates of wage theft in the U.S. in her book Wage Theft In America. Some of the harsh realities she shares are:
- 60% of nursing homes stole workers’ wages.
- 89% of non-monitored garment factories in Los Angeles and 67% of non-monitored garment factories in New York City stole workers’ wages.
- 25% of tomato producers, 35% of lettuce producers, 51% of cucumber producers, 58% of onion producers, and 62% of garlic producers hiring farm workers stole workers’ wages.
- Almost 50% of day laborers, who tend to focus on construction work, have had their wages stolen.
How has wage theft become an American epidemic? One reason is that labor laws preventing wage theft are rarely enforced. In part this is due to the Department of Labor's failure over the past decade to address the issue and the Bush administration's unabashed pandering to big business interests. In part it was due to government processes and policies that ranged from inefficient to outright deceptive. And it part it was due to a lack of resources and agents to enforce penalties for wage theft. In short, enforcement of labor laws has been about as tidy as a four-year-old eating ice cream on a tilt-a-whirl. But the good news is the Obama administration and Secretary Solis can (and I believe will) do something about it.
Secretary Solis has already proclaimed her commitment to reducing wage theft in America, in part by hiring 250 new agents to enforce labor violations. This is a huge improvement and a great start. However, you can make an even bigger dent in the wage theft epidemic by supporting the Employee Free Choice Act. The Employee Free Choice Act will allow workers to form a union when most of them want one and will help protect workers against wage theft and other exploitative violations, including human trafficking. It's important not to let the great strides toward protecting workers fall off the national agenda, or the wage theft epidemic will spread until it makes the swine flu look like a hangnail.
Photo Credit: Worker wearing protective gloves by NIOSH
Beef Tacos and Forced Prostitution
Published September 03, 2009 @ 12:00PM PT
La Cabana, a Mexican restaurant in Atlanta suburb Woodstock, GA, was famous for two things -- the beef tacos in the front of the house and the young women and teen girls selling sex in the back. That's because this Mexican restaurant was a front for a human trafficking operation from Central and South America to metro Atlanta. Selling ethnic foods by day and human beings by night is a trend among traffickers all over the country.
At La Cabana, women and girls as young as 15 were smuggled from Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador into the U.S. While the restaurant was open, they served customers plates of Hispanic delicacies. But after the kitchen closed, the restaurant became a gentleman's club, and they serviced the mostly Hispanic male audience sexually. In a back room, the women and girls were forced to engage in prostitution to pay off their smuggling debt. Interestingly enough, none of the news reports I found on this case called it human trafficking. But if this isn't human trafficking, then I'll buy Rush Limbaugh's greatest hits tape.
Keeping trafficking operations within one cultural, racial, or ethic group are one technique traffickers use tp avoid detection by the police. The philosophy is that operating a criminal enterprise within a community of "friends" is safer. This happens often with suburban brothels in private homes that sell cater exclusively to Korean men, Hispanic men, East African men, etc. But large numbers of men going in and out of a private home at odd hours might look suspicious to neighbors. Therefore, an ethnic restaurant provides an ideal cover for the traffickers. Plus, they have two sources of income from the women they are exploiting: their labor in the restaurant and their sexual exploitation. In this case, fortunately, the police were a couple steps ahead.
The La Cabana trafficking ring got busted because someone, presumably who lived in the area, called in a tip about the loud music late at night and Hispanic women going in and out of the building frequently. This is one more example of how people like you, just by being aware of your surroundings, can help trafficked people to safety. If you see something suspicious, don't trick yourself into believing you're the Dark Knight and go running in guns-or-video-cameras-blazing. But do call the National Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-3737-888 or call local law enforcement.
Photo credit: Loco beef taco by jasonlam
This Labor Day, Support Unions to End Human Trafficking
Published September 03, 2009 @ 07:00AM PT
Labor Day traditionally marks the end of summer across the country, but it's also a time to honor the contributions of working people and unions in the U.S. and around the world. While child labor and trafficking continue in the U.S., unions in this country have historically played a critical role in both calling for stronger legal protections for young workers and in improving conditions for adult workers.
As I have argued here on Change.org before, unions are a very important part of efforts to reduce child labor, forced labor and trafficking. When workers have a voice on the job, they can negotiate with their employers for better conditions so that they can support their families. Better wages for parents means that children are less likely to need to work. High rates of unionization improve standards for non-union workers as well by raising the bar for worker rights as opposed to contributing to a race to the bottom. This improvement reduces the need of workers to end up in situations of trafficking and forced labor.
Because of the benefits unionizing has for workers, employers often use a number of forms of intimidation to keep them from exercising their rights to join unions. For example, in countries like Colombia and the Philippines, union leaders are often targeted for murder, false arrest and death threats by paramilitary groups. Other workers are fired or blacklisted by companies when they start to organize. Corporations like Wal-Mart are infamous for forcing employees to attend anti-union forums and distributing anti-union pamphlets or even closing down entire stores when there is a rumor of union organizing efforts underway. Many companies institute employment schemes that greatly reduce the number of workers who are eligible for union membership under labor law. These are just a few examples of how workers see their freedom of association violated on a regular basis.
The International Labor Rights Forum has been fighting the most exploitative labor conditions like child labor, forced labor and trafficking for years. We created a new toolkit that we launches today to explain the importance of unions to reducing these abuses and highlighting different case studies of how the right to organize is violated around the world. Most importantly, we have lots of ideas of how you can support workers who are organizing to improve their living and working conditions. For example, what better way to celebrate Labor Day than to send a quick e-mail to some of the big companies named in our report for violating worker rights? Click here to take action.
We hope that you will check out the new toolkit to learn more about the right to organize. Make sure to share this resource with your community groups, friends and co-workers because when we all work together we CAN create a just world for workers!
Photo credit: ILRF
How To Get Involved in Historic Anti-Trafficking Events
Published September 02, 2009 @ 11:00AM PT
On September 26, community groups from across the country will come together and walk to fight child trafficking. Grassroots organization DC Stop Modern Slavery (DCSMS) will host the DC Walk to Stop Child Trafficking at Meridian Hill Park from 9 a.m. - 2 p.m., making it largest anti -human trafficking event ever in the nation's capital and drawing attention to child trafficking in front of politicians and policy makers from across the country.
DC walkers will join their counterparts in more than 50 U.S. cities and on 40 U.S. university campuses to highlight September as Combating Human Trafficking Month. The nationwide effort is being coordinated by Stop Child Trafficking Now, a New York-based non-profit organization working to address the demand side of sex trafficking. In DC, local artists will perform rock, country, hip-hop, jazz, and cultural music while local and national human trafficking experts speak. And across the country, everyone from truckers to lawyers to students to pastors will come together and take a stand against child trafficking.
Here's how you can get involved:
If you live in the Washington, DC area, get your family, some friends, or your community group together and sign up for the DC Walk to Stop Child Trafficking.
If you live somewhere else, find a walk near you and get involved. Stop Child Trafficking walks are happening all over the country. If you can't find a walk near you, Stop Child Trafficking will help you start one. Or, you could consider supporting another walk financially.
All proceeds are shared between Stop Child Trafficking Now and a local anti-trafficking organization.
September 26 will be a historic opportunity to put child trafficking on the national agenda. I will be bringing you all the action from the DC walk, and I hope all of you who attend other walks will send in stories and pictures as well. Together, we can stop child trafficking.
Photo credit: Why Are You Sad, Kelly by Tacit Requiem
