Congress Has Only Now Banned Slave Labor in US Imports

But without the empowerment of labor organizations or strong preventive regulations, symbolic gestures will not change the material conditions driving workers into positions of extreme vulnerability. Aside from reactive import bans, various programs have targeted forced labor more locally, and with spotty success. For example, organizations seeking to move children out of illicit work and place them in school are challenged by the structural forces of children’s basic economic necessity.

One analysis of child carpet-weavers in Nepal, showing the ineffectiveness of schooling-incentive programs, noted that “selection into hazardous child labor may be such that the most desperate participate. Subsistence concerns may lead to labor supply that is especially inelastic to changes in net returns to schooling.”

Inelastic. The seeming stubbornness of forced labor attests to capitalism’s vicious success. It is no coincidence, moreover, that the areas where forced labor and related violations are rife also happen to hot spots of aggressive economic liberalization, and in fact, the countries that used trafficked and coerced workers to produce lucrative agricultural goods, apparel, and other high-demand consumer exports have “healthy” trade relations with the United States, often facilitated by free-trade regimes (most recently codified in the hotly debated Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact involving Pacific Rim countries).

Interventions focused on the most extreme violations produce feel-good kudos for nonprofit humanitarian enterprises in the short term, but not the wages families need to eat tomorrow. So while abhorrent forms of forced labor shock the conscience, they emanate less from rank cruelty than from the criminal poverty that the Global South economy makes flourish. But enslavement is not inherent to all economic markets, just as not all industries are inherently exploitative. The task is shaping a modern economy that is harmonized with evolving concepts of social progress. Erasing offensive legislation opens room for debate—and invites both state and society to articulate a different set of values instead.

Article Appeared @http://www.thenation.com/article/finally-a-ban-on-slavery/

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *