Slavery is not an injustice of the past. Over 45.8 million slaves are currently being exploited in our world, making more people trapped under this injustice today than at any other point in human history.
But what many do not know is that modern-day slavery, in its multitude of forms, permeates industry. Ordinary products from companies like Peet’s Coffee, Starbucks, Microsoft, Canon, Forever 21, Gap and Nike perpetuate this human rights violation, through a lack of transparency regarding their sourcing of raw materials and lack of workers’ rights throughout the entirety of their supply chains.
If you have ever made a purchase or used a service in the United States, there is a great probability that a modern-day slave was exploited in the creation of that product or service. Forced labor and child labor are often in the supply chain for popular goods, from exported seafood, makeup and toiletries, electronics, clothing, jewelry and more. According to the US Department of Labor’s 2014 List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor, 64 products in the agricultural, forestry and fishing industry, ranging from regular produce like bananas, blueberries and pineapples to seafood including tilapia, shellfish and lobster, 42 items in the manufacturing industry, including clay bricks, textiles and surgical instruments, and 29 types of precious minerals and gems from the mining and quarrying industry comprising of emeralds, diamonds, salt and zinc, were produced at the laboring hands of victims of child labor and forced labor from over 80 countries internationally. An exhaustive database on items produced by child labor and forced labor abroad and sold in the United States according to the US Labor Department can be found here.
Free2Work, a project by the Not For Sale Organization, a leading anti-trafficking non-profit, makes scorecards available for some of the largest name brand companies in America, basing letter-grade ratings on the companies’ overall compliance with human rights and basic workers’ rights to a minimum wage and collective bargaining, as well as company policies, transparency and traceability, and monitoring and training.
Brands with failing scores, such as Hollister, Walmart, Forever 21, Abercrombie and Fitch and Lacoste, are some among many clothing brands at risk of utilizing forced labor or child labor when collecting raw materials. Children in countries like Uzbekistan, the fourth largest cotton exporter globally, are particularly at risk in this respect, as up to 2 million children withdraw from school to work in cotton fields for 10 hours a day, 2-3 months each year to help collect the material needed for the finished products we know and love. For example, in 2012, the clothing and fashion brand H&M was under fire by Anti-Slavery International for outsourcing cotton picked by child laborers in Uzbekistan and thus further contributing to extreme poverty levels and perpetuating human rights violations in that nation.
These trends are especially the case in the cocoa industry, in which families in the Ivory coast of Africa are employed with little to no pay to extract cocoa plants for the chocolate products we purchase year-round. UNICEF estimates that 500,000 children are exploited in the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast alone, a region which according to the Food Empowerment Project (FEP) , helps supply more than 70% of the world’s cocoa. FEP further found that cocoa farmers in West African countries, like Ghana and the Ivory Coast, earn less than $2 a day, and often times, children (usually between the ages of 12 and 16) are employed on cocoa farms to keep prices low and competitive. As expected, such child laborers do not attend school, 40% in the Ivory Coast alone to be exact. Companies like Mars, Hershey’s, Nestle and Cadbury thus hold low marks on the Free2Work grading scale as they often utilize unpaid workers for extraneous hours in heinous conditions when deriving the cocoa and raw materials needed to ultimately produce and manufacture their chocolate and confectionary items.
The coffee industry is equally appalling in this respect. According to the international human rights organization Global Exchange, while coffee is the second most traded commodity in the world, coffee bean laborers may not even make a living minimum wage; in Guatemala for instance, though workers pick a 100-pound quota in exchange for a minimum wage of less than $3 a day, more than half of such workers aren’t paid minimum wage. Many others are forced to work overtime, and then are denied compensation, or do not receive their rightful employee benefits, averaging at a total monthly income equivalent to less than 150 US dollars. Coffee brands such as Peet’s, Seattle’s Best, Nescafe and Dunkin’ Donuts score much less than satisfactory on the Free2Work rating scale, as workers and human rights are not well safeguarded in the entirety of their production processes, beginning with their derivation of materials.
Similar supply chain practices further permeate the technology industry. According to Made in a Free World CEO and founder, modern-day abolitionist Justin Dillon, at least 3.2 slaves can be involved in the making of a typical smartphone. Brands like Canon, HTC and Sony use metals that can be linked to child and forced labor in countries abroad making their scores proportionally lower on the Free2Work scaling.
Made in a Free World, a San Francisco-based anti-slavery organization, formulated an online slavery calculator per the direction of the US State Department’s Human Trafficking division. Asking a series of questions ranging from age to dietary habits and the toiletries in your bathroom, the “Slavery Footprint” survey generates an estimate of how many slaves were involved in the making of the products and services an individual owns and uses which in turn helps indicate which lifestyle choices are tied most heavily to modern-day slavery. I would strongly urge you to take the survey and discover your slavery footprint.
With forced and child labor usually occurring deep within a supply chain, companies do not have good access to information on their labor conditions, but that does not mean that we should be equally blind. As human beings, it is essential to be aware of the existence of modern-day slavery to tap into our sense of common humanity for others and for the victims of this grave injustice; as consumers, however, it is pivotal to understand where our dollar is headed and begin to command our cash with conscience.
