Photo taken on Sept. 17, 2021 shows the US Capitol building, seen through a barrier fence, in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie) BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) — The United States’ Forced Labor Practice at Home and Abroad: Truths and FactsAugust 2022IntroductionOver the years, the United States has invented the biggest lies century, such as the so-called “genocide” and “forced labor” in Xinjiang, in an attempt to smear and contain China. It has promulgated and implemented the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Law”, denigrating the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and undermining the livelihood and development of the people of Xinjiang. In fact, the forced labor claim does not apply to Xinjiang at all. Instead, it is a chronic disease of the United States that dates back to the founding of the country. It remains rampant today and is getting worse than ever. This report records the practice of forced labor in the United States at home and abroad from historical and current perspectives. The goal is to get the facts straight, debunk the lies and help the world better understand what forced labor is and who is doing it. Let the truth shine through the darkness of lies.I. There is a clear definition of forced labor in international lawSince the 1930s, a series of conventions, protocols and other documents have established clear definitions and determinations of forced labor in international law.◆ The fundamental standards of the International Labor Organization (ILO) on forced labor include: the Forced Labor Convention, 1930 (No. 29, ratified by 179 member states by the end of 2021), the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention, 1957 (No. 105, ratified by 176 member states at the end of 2021) and the 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labor Convention, 1930 (ratified by 59 member states by the end of 2021).◆ According to the Forced Labor Convention, 1930, the term forced labor “shall mean any work or service exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which said person has not offered himself voluntarily.” In other words, “involuntariness,” “threat of penalty,” and “work or service” are three core elements of forced labor.◆ According to ILO statistics, the United States has ratified only 14 international labor conventions, one of the lower numbers among member states Has ratified only two of the ten core conventions, and has not yet ratified the Forced Labor Convention, 1930 to date.◆ China has ratified 28 international conventions labor conventions The Forced Labor Convention of 1930 and the Abolition of Forced Labor Convention of 1957 were ratified in April 2022. China faithfully fulfills its obligations under international conventions and truly protects the rights of workers and prohibits forced labor through formulating laws and policies and enforcement. Forced labor is explicitly prohibited under Chinese law. The crime of forced labor is specified in article 244 of the Penal Law. In Xinjiang, workers of all ethnic groups choose jobs according to their own free will, enter into employment contracts with employers, and obtain remuneration and rights and interests in accordance with laws and regulations such as the Labor Law and the Contract Law. Labor, and on the basis of equality, voluntariness and consensus. Governments at various levels in Xinjiang also provide necessary job training to workers who apply voluntarily. Workers of all groups Ethnic groups are free to choose where to work and what to do. They are never threatened with a penalty or restricted in their personal freedom. There is no forced labor in Xinjiang. Poster: US Lacks Commitment to Address Forced Labor (Xinhua) II. Forced labor in the United States was born and grew with the founding of the nation. The slave trade was an original sin of the United States. When the United States was founded, it was the blood and tears of millions of black slaves sold into the country that helped create immense wealth and complete t Primitive accumulation of capital.◆ For a country with a history of only 246 years, the Slavery had been legal in the United States for almost a third of its history. According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, in the history of the slave trade there were at least 36,000 “slave expeditions” between 1514 and 1866. And according to the German data firm Statista, there were around 700,000 black slaves in the United States in 1790, while by 1860 the number had exceeded 3.95 million and fewer than 490,000 African Americans were free nationwide.◆ Black slaves, without adequate food or clothing, were forced to work in harsh conditions at the bottom of society. They were cruelly exploited and many were even tortured to death. Many black slaves were forced to work in the cotton industry. As the American writer Edward Baptist wrote in his book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, the whip encouraged slaves to devote all their physical strength and most of their energy to cotton picking, which increased speed and velocity. faster. Under the brute force of slave owners, cotton production in the United States in 1860 reached 130 times that of 1800. Behind the rapid increase o In cotton production is the blood and tears of black slaves.◆ Data shows that the value of labor extracted from black slaves by US slave owners amounts to US$14 trillion a current prices. According to James Madison’s Montpelier website, the home of the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, the economy of slavery was once the main engine of the American economy. Slavery was essential to the American economy from tobacco farming in Virginia to shipbuilding in Rhode Island. In 1850, slaves produced 80 percent of America’s exports. Sven Beckert, a historian at Harvard University, said that the United States and the West prospered through slavery, not democracy.◆ The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization, noted in tracing the history of slavery in the United States that “criminal slaves” and “property slaves” have coexisted since the late 18th century. In Virginia, the state with the most African-Americans in jail, prisoners were declared “dead spirits” and “slaves of the state.” It wasn’t until the early 20th century that states stopped leasing farmers and industrial and commercial operators as cheap labor for railroads, highways and coal mines. In Georgia in 1907, a criminal rent cessation caused an economic impact on industries ranging from brickmaking to mining, with many businesses closing as a result.◆ Records show that by the late 1860s, hundreds of Thousands of Chinese workers had been involved in building railroads in the U.S. Poor Chinese peasants boarded ships known as “floating hells,” where they crammed like sardines and they floated in the sea for about two months before arriving in California and working as coolies. On these trips, up to 64.21 percent of Chinese people died due to inhumane treatment, typhoons or infectious diseases. Those who survived became targets of racial discrimination and whipping by white supervisors. It took them just seven years to build a railway originally planned as a 14-year project. As some historians say, the bones of Chinese workers can be found under every railway sleeper. Poster: Hotbed of Forced Labor in a US Private Prison (Xinhua) III. America has a horrible history of forced labor. Over the years, the US government has deliberately evaded its responsibility to protect labor, resulting in “slave labor” among inmates in private prisons, the rampant use of child labor, and hideous forced labor in prisons. private. agricultural sector, effectively turning the United States into a country of “modern slavery”. 1. Forced labor is rampant in US prisons. According to a Prison Policy Initiative report, 2 million inmates are held in 102 federal prisons, 1,566 state prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention and 82 prisons in India, as well as in military prisons and other facilities in the United States. With less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States has a quarter of the world’s detainees, making it the country with the largest incarcerated population and the highest incarceration rate.◆ The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, while nominally protecting citizens from forced labor, it excludes criminals. The US prison system abuses the Enmi enda 13 to legalize forced labor among prisoners. In prisons at the federal and subnational levels, there are a large number of incarcerated workers who are engaged in the day-to-day maintenance of the prison system, including repairs, cooking, facility cleaning, and laundry. Most of them are black or other people of color. Some inmates are rented out to public projects or employed by construction, road maintenance, forestry, and funeral service companies, jobs that are considered dirty, heavy, or high-risk. According to Reuters, Suniva, one of the largest solar panel manufacturers in the US, uses prison labor to keep costs down. The director of the company admitted to working with Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) in relocating production lines from Asia to the United States for a lucrative federal contract.◆ According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) , at least 30 US states include prisoners as a source of labor for disasters and other emergency operations, and at least 14 hire prisoners to fight wildfires. Most of the incarcerated workers say they have never received formal job training and often have to perform dangerous operations against safety protocols and without protective equipment. Casualties, which are not uncommon, often go unrecorded in prisons. The Atlantic commented in 2015 that “convict leasing was cheaper than slavery, since farm owners and companies didn’t have to worry about the health of their workers.”◆ The United States has effectively formed a “industrial complex of prisons” expanding. Private prisons operating under government contracts have become a major source of forced labor in the United States. the worker Those incarcerated in private prisons are totally at the mercy of their employers and have no right to refuse to work. As many as 76 percent of inmates interviewed reported various punishments when they were unable or unwilling to work, including solitary confinement. , the reduction of family visits, or the denial of bail or commutation. In addition, inmates have no choice in their work assignments which are entirely based on the arbitrary, discriminatory or even punitive decisions of prison administration staff. Laura Appleman, a professor at Willamette University School of Law, points out in her report Bloody Lucre: Carceral Labor and Prison Profit that private prison is a “pernicious form of servitude,” and that prisoners are “trapped in the service of ever-increasing profits, the literal income from physical labor, suffering, and exploitation.” work, thus turning private prisons into slavery “concentration camps” where they could make fortunes by exploiting the poor. Due to a lack of supervision, forced labor prisoners work long hours in harsh conditions and receive little or, in some cases, nothing at all. In early 2022, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, exposing the pervasive power-for-money deals in the operation of detention facilities in America’s private prisons, which exacerbate excessive incarceration and forced labor, and demanding that the Marshals Service of the USA provides information on the operators. contracts and go public.◆ US prisons spend less than one percent of their budget paying incarcerated workers, who produce goods and services. services worth more than 11,000 million dollars each year. Large American corporations use prison labor rampantly, since l Prisoners have no labor rights and are cheap. Private prisons under government contracts earn millions of dollars a year from forced prison labor. As of May 2022, the average hourly wage in the United States was about US$10.96, while incarcerated workers were paid less than a dollar an hour. Additionally, many prison facilities have not given inmates any pay raises for years or even decades. In seven states, including Florida, prisoners are paid nothing for most of their job duties. In addition, prisons withhold many inmates’ wages for “taxes, room and board, and court costs.” More than 70 percent of those surveyed said they were unable to afford basic necessities while incarcerated.◆ During the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 40 US states asked inmates to make masks, hand sanitizer, and other protective equipment, dispose of large amounts of medical waste from hospitals, move dead bodies, build coffins and dig graves. The inmates who carried out these high-risk tasks hardly had the necessary protection. Since the start of the pandemic, nearly a third of people incarcerated in the United States have contracted COVID-19, and 3,000 of them have died from inadequate medical care or poor conditions of detention. The Los Angeles Times revealed that during the pandemic, thousands of prisoners in California were forced to manufacture masks and furniture in high-risk conditions. Prison factories continued to operate despite numerous confirmed cases of COVID. Inmates had to sew thousands of masks a day, without finding one for themselves. Prison staff have threatened to postpone the release date if the inmates refuse to do the work. Poster: Lack of protection ion in the US on the problem of child labor (Xinhua) 2. Forced labor of women and children is terrible◆ Child labor has long been a problem in the United States. American mines, tobacco farms, and textile mills began recruiting and exploiting children more than a century ago. To date, the United States remains the only one of the 193 member states of the United Nations Organization (UN) that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and child labor remains a problem not resolved in the country. Statistics from the US Department of Health and Human Services and other institutions show that half of the 100,000 people trafficked into the United States each year for forced labor are minors.◆ According to estimates by the nonprofit For-profit Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, there are about 500,000 child farmworkers left in the United States, many of whom started working at age eight and work up to 72 hours a week. These child farmworkers are regularly exposed to dangerous chemicals like pesticides. Additionally, they are at increased risk of work-related injuries due to the need to operate sharp tools and heavy machines without the necessary training and protective measures. According to the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an estimated 907 youth deaths occurred on farms in the US between 1995 and 2002. The Washington Post reported that about 452 children died from injuries on farms. the workplace in the United States between 2003 and 2016, including 237 child deaths in agriculture. A November 2018 US Government Accountability Office report shows that around 5.5% of child labor is performed in the workplace. agriculture and accounts for more than 50% of all work-related child deaths. In several US states, tobacco farms employ large numbers of children to harvest and dry tobacco leaves, posing a significant risk to their physical and mental health. Many children suffered from nicotine poisoning and some were even diagnosed with a lung infection.◆ According to official statistics, in 2019 alone, US law enforcement officers found 858 cases of child labor in violation of the Labor Standards Act Justas, and 544 minors were found working in dangerous places. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest union federation in the United States, said the Department of Labor (DOL) only reported 34 child labor violations on average annually, far lower than the actual number. , revealing shortcomings in DOL law enforcement.◆ The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that between 240,000 and 325,000 women and children are at risk of sexual exploitation each year in the United States. The US NGO End Slavery Now said that a child trafficked into the sex industry “works” 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and perpetrators can exploit between US$150,000 and US$200,000 each year.3. Forced labor is prevalent in many sectors in the United States◆ An article published on the University of Denver website reveals that at least 500,000 people in the United States live in modern day slavery and are victims of forced labor. With forced labor widespread, labor trafficking in the United States is particularly severe in 23 sectors, including domestic services, agricultural plantation, tourism, catering, health care, and beauty services. In 2004, after studying cas From 1998 to 2003, the Center for Human Rights at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that ten thousand or more people work as forced laborers in dozens of cities and towns across the country, forming an illicit trade. that is hidden, inhumane, pervasive and criminal.◆ Existing US immigration law is spawning modern day slavery. The US temporary visa system binds foreign workers to their employers by law, leaving them in a vulnerable position, as workers, fearing deportation, are hesitant to quit their jobs, even if employers arbitrarily reduce their wages or extend working hours. The asymmetry between employers and employees is systemic, and there is evidence connecting forced labor in the United States with certain types of visas. A 2014 study by the Urban Institute and Northeast ern University shows that more than 70 percent of interviewed victims of forced labor entered the United States legally with a visa. Ending this form of modern day slavery requires reform of US immigration law. However, both Congress and the administration lack the will to make such reform.◆ Most sweatshops in the United States are based in major cities like New York and Los Angeles. These stores typically do clothing, coffee, and electronics. The DOL estimated that as many as 22,000 sweatshops in the country were in the garment industry alone. In order to minimize costs and maximize profits, sweatshop owners take advantage of loopholes in various ways to evade government regulation. Workers get wages and benefits well below legal thresholds and are not paid accordingly for working too hard. as overtime. In extreme cases, they are even abused by employers. According to a DOL investigative report obtained by The New York Times, Vietnamese workers at a garment factory in American Samoa were routinely beaten by factory guards, and one worker lost her left eye after a guard struck her. hit with a pipe. Indian workers at a food factory in Oklahoma were consistently provided with inadequate food. Many factory workers were severely malnourished and resembled “walking skeletons.”◆ In the domestic services sector, the vast majority of service personnel are immigrants and are not recognized as employees under US law. According to US immigration policy, they are not allowed to freely move their clients, or they will be deported. Most of the victims work in very poor conditions. They are often unable to receive their wages on time and are paid below the minimum rate. They are subject to violence, sexual assault and intimidation by employers and their families, and are prohibited from reporting anyone, otherwise they will be deported. According to the 2014 report by the Urban Institute and Northeastern University, more than one-third of t Victims of forced labor in the United States are domestic workers.◆ In the agricultural sector, about 30 percent of farmworkers and their families live below the federal poverty line. They are subject to threats, violence and forced labor, and are unable to express their wishes. The town of Immokalee in southwest Florida is known as the “tomato town” of the United States. It has a population of around 26,000 people, most of whom are farmers from countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti. The local minimum wage is US$8.65 per hour. Yes Yet those farmworkers are only paid $5.5 an hour, far less than the minimum rate. According to a Guardian survey, foreign workers on US corn farms are not protected by law. They live in extremely precarious conditions and receive only US$225 after working 12 hours a day for 15 days. They are often victims of sexual assault, harassment, wage theft, and workplace injuries or even fatal accidents in the workplace, and are often exposed to dangerous chemicals. Freelance journalist Gina-Marie Cheeseman noted in her 2017 report that forced labor is more common in the US than you might think that on some US farms, foreign workers are forced to sleep in shacks and box trucks, and are asked to pick up produce without being paid. Those who try to escape are beaten. According to a report by the American Economic Policy Institute, seasonal farmworkers in the United States are vulnerable to wage theft and other abuses due to their immigration status and fear of retaliation and deportation. Millions of dollars in back wages are reported each year. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division is overfunded and understaffed to provide adequate protection and relief to farmworkers. As a result, those workers believe it is neither necessary nor helpful to report employer violations to the DOL.◆ According to a 2015 New York Times survey of the New York nail industry, the vast majority of workers in the nail industry are paid below minimum wage and sometimes not even paid at all. Those workers are severely exploited and subjected to various kinds of humiliation, including constant video monitoring and c physical assent. Most of these workers are immigrants from China, the Republic of Korea, Nepal and South America. They often work overtime for very low wages. Without legal residency status, many New York nail industry workers, though exploited by their employees, are often too scared to speak out.◆ Denise Brennan, an American writer, noted in her book that the policy of Instead of correcting the problem of human trafficking and improving the situation of vulnerable groups in society, US immigration has exacerbated social problems and allowed more covert forms of forced labor to appear in US society. American society does not provide enough support and relief to the victims who were released from forced labor, willingly letting them fall into new forced labor traps just to earn a living, and forever tormented by a vicious cycle of slavery and oppression.◆ According to the 2021 Federal Trafficking in Persons Report released by the United States Human Trafficking Institute in June 2022, the number of criminal forced labor cases filed in 2021 increased by 22 percent from 2020. Of the 449 victims in cases of human trafficking cases filed in federal court in the United States in 2021, 162 or 36 percent were victims of forced labor. And 93 percent of identified victims in forced labor cases were foreign nationals. (more) ■
Photo taken on Sept. 17, 2021 shows the US Capitol building, seen through a barrier fence, in Washington, D.C., the United States. (Xinhua/Liu Jie)
BEIJING, Aug. 9 (Xinhua) — The United States’ practice of forced labor at home and abroad: truth and facts
Over the years, the United States has invented the biggest lies of the century, such as the so-called “genocide” and “forced labor” in Xinjiang, in an attempt to smear and contain China. It has enacted and implemented the “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Law”, denigrating the human rights situation in Xinjiang, and undermining the livelihood and development of the people of Xinjiang. In fact, the forced labor claim does not apply to Xinjiang at all. Instead, it is a chronic disease of the United States that dates back to the founding of the country. It’s still rampant today, and it’s getting worse than ever.
This report records the practice of forced labor in the United States at home and abroad from historical and current perspectives. The goal is to get the facts straight, debunk the lies and help the world better understand what forced labor is and who is doing it. Let the truth shine through the darkness of lies.
I. There is a clear definition of forced labor in international law
Since the 1930s, a series of conventions, protocols and other documents have established clear definition and determination standards for forced labor in international law.
◆ International Labor Organization (ILO) core standards on forced labor include: Forced Labor Convention, 1930 (No. 29, ratified by 179 member states by end 2021), Abolition of Labor Convention 1957 (No. 105, ratified by 176 member states by the end of 2021) and the 2014 Protocol to the Forced Labor Convention, 1930 (ratified by 59 member states by the end of 2021).
◆ According to the Forced Labor Convention, 1930, the term forced labor “means all work or service which is exacted from any person under the menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not offered himself voluntarily.” In other words, “involuntariness”, “threat of punishment” and “work or service” are three central elements of forced labour.
◆ According to ILO statistics, the United States has ratified only 14 international labor conventions, one of the lowest numbers among member states. It has ratified only two of the ten fundamental Conventions and has not yet ratified the Forced Labor Convention, 1930 to the present day.
◆ China has ratified 28 international labor conventions. The 1930 Forced Labor Convention and the 1957 Abolition of Forced Labor Convention were ratified in April 2022. China faithfully fulfills its obligations under international conventions and truly protects workers’ rights and prohibits forced labor through the formulation and implementation of laws and policies. Forced labor is explicitly prohibited by Chinese law. The crime of forced labor is defined in article 244 of the Penal Law. In Xinjiang, workers of all ethnic groups choose jobs according to their own free will, enter into employment contracts with employers, and obtain remuneration and rights and interests in accordance with laws and regulations such as the Labor Law and the Labor Contract Law, and in the basis of equality, voluntariness and consensus. Governments at various levels in Xinjiang also provide necessary job training to workers who apply voluntarily. Workers of all ethnic groups are free to choose where to work and what to do. They are never threatened with a penalty or restricted in their personal freedom. There is no forced labor in Xinjiang.
Poster: US lacks commitment to address forced labor (Xinhua)
II. Forced labor in the United States was born and grew with the founding of the nation
The slave trade was an original sin of the United States. When the United States was founded, it was the blood and tears of millions of black slaves sold into the country that helped create immense wealth and complete the primitive accumulation of capital.
◆ For a country with a history of only 246 years, slavery had been legal in the United States for almost a third of its history. According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, in the history of the slave trade there were at least 36,000 “slave expeditions” between 1514 and 1866. And according to the German data firm Statista, there were around 700,000 black slaves in the United States in 1790, while by 1860 the number had exceeded 3.95 million and fewer than 490,000 African Americans were free nationwide.
◆ Black slaves, without adequate food or clothing, were forced to work in harsh conditions at the bottom of society. They were cruelly exploited and many were even tortured to death. Many black slaves were forced to work in the cotton industry. As the American writer Edward Baptist wrote in his book The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, the whip drove slaves to devote all their physical strength and most of their energy to picking cotton, causing the speed was faster and faster. faster. Under the brute force of slave owners, cotton production in the United States in 1860 reached 130 times that of 1800. Behind the rapid increase in cotton production is the blood and tears of black slaves.
◆ Data shows that the value of labor extracted from black slaves by US slave owners amounts to US$14 trillion at current prices. According to James Madison’s Montpelier website, the home of the fourth president of the United States, James Madison, the economy of slavery was once the main engine of the American economy. Slavery was essential to the American economy from tobacco farming in Virginia to shipbuilding in Rhode Island. In 1850, slaves produced 80 percent of America’s exports. Sven Beckert, a historian at Harvard University, said that the United States and the West prospered through slavery, not democracy.
◆ The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization, noted in tracing the history of slavery in the United States that “criminal slaves” and “property slaves” have coexisted since the late 18th century. In Virginia, the state with the most African-Americans in prison, inmates were declared “dead spirits” and “slaves of the state.” It wasn’t until the early 20th century that states stopped leasing farmers and industrial and commercial operators as cheap labor for railroads, highways and coal mines. In Georgia, a 1907 cessation of renting criminals had an economic impact on industries ranging from brick-making to mining, with many businesses closing as a result.
◆ Records show that by the late 1860s, hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers had been involved in building railroads in the US Poor Chinese peasants boarded ships known as “floating hells,” where they crammed like sardines and floated adrift. the sea for about two months before coming to California and working as coolies. On these trips, up to 64.21 percent of Chinese people died due to inhumane treatment, typhoons or infectious diseases. Those who survived became targets of racial discrimination and whipping by white supervisors. It took them just seven years to build a railway originally planned as a 14-year project. As some historians say, the bones of Chinese workers can be found under every railway sleeper.
Poster: US private prison hotbed of forced labor (Xinhua)
third America has a horrible history of forced labor
Over the years, the US government has deliberately evaded its responsibility to protect labor, resulting in “slave labor” among inmates in private prisons, the rampant use of child labor, and forced labor in the agricultural sector, turning the United States into a country of “modern slavery”.
1. Forced labor is rampant in US prisons.
◆ The United States is a country of prisons in every way. According to a report by the Prison Policy Initiative, 2 million inmates are held in 102 federal prisons, 1,566 state prisons, 2,850 local jails, 1,510 juvenile correctional facilities, 186 immigration detention centers, and 82 Indian jails, as well as military prisons. and other facilities in the United States. With less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States has a quarter of the world’s detainees, making it the country with the largest incarcerated population and the highest incarceration rate.
◆ The 13th Amendment to the US Constitution, while nominally protecting citizens from forced labor, excludes criminals. The US prison system abuses the 13th Amendment to legalize forced labor among prisoners. In prisons at the federal and subnational levels, there are a large number of incarcerated workers who are engaged in the day-to-day maintenance of the prison system, including repairs, cooking, facility cleaning, and laundry. Most of them are black or other people of color. Some inmates are rented out to public projects or employed by construction, road maintenance, forestry, and funeral service companies, jobs that are considered dirty, heavy, or high-risk. According to Reuters, Suniva, one of the largest US solar panel makers, uses prison labor to keep costs down. The head of the company admitted to working with Federal Prison Industries (UNICOR) in relocating production lines from Asia to the United States for a lucrative federal contract.
◆ According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), at least 30 US states include prisoners as a source of labor for disasters and other emergency operations, and at least 14 hire prisoners to fight wildfires. Most of the incarcerated workers say they have never received formal job training and often have to perform dangerous operations against safety protocols and without protective equipment. Casualties, which are not uncommon, often go unrecorded in prisons. The Atlantic commented in 2015 that “convict leasing was cheaper than slavery, as farm owners and businesses did not have to worry about the health of their workers.”
◆ The United States has effectively formed a sprawling “prison industrial complex.” Private prisons operating under government contracts have become a major source of forced labor in the United States. Workers incarcerated in private prisons are completely at the mercy of their employers and have no right to refuse to work. As many as 76 percent of inmates interviewed reported various punishments when they were unable or unwilling to work, including solitary confinement, reduced family visits, or denial of bail or commutation. In addition, prisoners have no choice in their work assignments, which are entirely based on arbitrary, discriminatory or even punitive decisions by prison administration staff. Laura Appleman, a professor at Willamette University School of Law, points out in her report Bloody Lucre: Carceral Labor and Prison Profit that private prison is a “pernicious form of servitude” and that prisoners are “trapped in the service of endless growing profits, the literal income from physical labor, suffering, and exploitation.”
◆ For years, private prisons in the United States have colluded with greedy politicians to force prisoners to work, thus turning private prisons into slavery “concentration camps” where they could make fortunes exploiting the poor. Due to a lack of supervision, forced labor prisoners work long hours in harsh conditions and receive little or, in some cases, nothing at all. In early 2022, the ACLU filed a lawsuit, exposing the pervasive power-for-money deals in the operation of detention facilities in America’s private prisons, which exacerbate excessive incarceration and forced labor, and demanding that the Marshals Service of the USA provides information on the operators. contracts and make it public.
◆ US prisons spend less than one percent of their budget paying incarcerated workers, who produce more than $11 billion worth of goods and services each year. Big US corporations use prison labor rampantly, as prisoners have no labor rights and are cheap. Private prisons under government contracts earn millions of dollars a year from forced prison labor. As of May 2022, the average hourly wage in the United States was about US$10.96, while incarcerated workers were paid less than a dollar an hour. Additionally, many prison facilities have not given inmates any pay raises for years or even decades. In seven states, including Florida, prisoners are paid nothing for most of their job duties. In addition, prisons withhold many inmates’ wages for “taxes, room and board, and court costs.” More than 70 percent of those surveyed said they were unable to afford basic needs while incarcerated.
◆ During the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 40 US states asked inmates to make masks, hand sanitizer and other protective equipment, remove large amounts of medical waste from hospitals, move dead bodies, build caskets and dig graves. The inmates who carried out these high-risk tasks hardly had the necessary protection. Since the start of the pandemic, nearly a third of people incarcerated in the United States have contracted COVID-19, and 3,000 of them have died from inadequate medical care or poor conditions of detention. The Los Angeles Times revealed that during the pandemic, thousands of prisoners in California were forced to manufacture masks and furniture in high-risk conditions. Prison factories continued to operate despite numerous confirmed cases of COVID. Inmates had to sew thousands of masks a day, without finding one for themselves. Prison staff have threatened to postpone the release date if the inmates refuse to do the work.
Poster: US lack of protection on child labor (Xinhua)
2. Forced labor of women and children is appalling
◆ Child labor has long been a problem in the United States. American mines, tobacco plantations, and textile mills began recruiting and exploiting children more than a century ago. To date, the United States remains the only one of the 193 member states of the United Nations Organization (UN) that has not ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, and child labor remains a problem not resolved in the country. Statistics from the US Department of Health and Human Services and other institutions show that half of the 100,000 people trafficked into the United States each year for forced labor are minors.
◆ According to estimates by the nonprofit Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs, there are about 500,000 child farmworkers left in the United States, many of whom started working at age eight and work up to 72 hours a week. These child farmworkers are regularly exposed to dangerous chemicals like pesticides. Additionally, they are at increased risk of work-related injuries due to the need to operate sharp tools and heavy machines without the necessary training and protective measures. According to the US National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, an estimated 907 youth deaths occurred on farms in the US between 1995 and 2002. The Washington Post reported that around 452 children died from on-site injuries of work in the United States between 2003 and 2016, including 237 child deaths in agriculture. A November 2018 US Government Accountability Office report shows that about 5.5% of child labor takes place in agriculture and accounts for more than 50% of all work-related child deaths. In several US states, tobacco farms employ large numbers of children to harvest and dry tobacco leaves, posing a significant risk to their physical and mental health. Many children suffered from nicotine poisoning and some were even diagnosed with lung infection.
◆ According to official statistics, in 2019 alone, US law enforcement officers found 858 cases of child labor in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act, and 544 minors worked in hazardous locations. The American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, the largest union federation in the United States, said the Department of Labor (DOL) only reported 34 child labor violations on average annually, far below the actual number. revealing deficiency in DOL Law Enforcement.
◆ The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that between 240,000 and 325,000 women and children are at risk of sexual exploitation each year in the United States. The US NGO End Slavery Now said that a child trafficked into the sex industry “works” 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and perpetrators can exploit between US$150,000 and US$200,000 each year.
3. Forced labor is prevalent in many sectors in the United States
◆ An article published on the University of Denver website reveals that at least 500,000 people in the United States live in modern day slavery and are victims of forced labor. With forced labor widespread, labor trafficking in the United States is particularly severe in 23 sectors, including domestic services, agricultural plantation, tourism, catering, health care, and beauty services. In 2004, after studying relevant cases from 1998 to 2003, the Human Rights Center of the University of California, Berkeley, pointed out that ten thousand or more people work as forced laborers in dozens of cities and towns throughout the country, forming a illicit trade. that is hidden, inhumane, pervasive and criminal.
◆ Existing immigration law in the US is fueling modern day slavery. The US temporary visa system binds foreign workers to their employers by law, leaving them in a vulnerable position, as workers, fearing deportation, are hesitant to quit their jobs, even if employers arbitrarily reduce their wages or extend working hours. The asymmetry between employers and employees is systemic, and there is evidence connecting forced labor in the United States with certain types of visas. A 2014 study by the Urban Institute and Northeastern University shows that more than 70 percent of interviewed victims of forced labor entered the United States legally with a visa. Ending this form of modern day slavery requires reform of US immigration law. However, both Congress and the administration lack the will to make such a reform.
◆ Most sweatshops in the United States are based in major cities like New York and Los Angeles. These stores typically do clothing, coffee, and electronics. The DOL estimated that as many as 22,000 sweatshops in the country were in the garment industry alone. In order to minimize costs and maximize profits, sweatshop owners take advantage of loopholes in various ways to evade government regulation. Workers get wages and benefits well below legal thresholds and are not paid accordingly for working long hours of overtime. In extreme cases, they are even abused by employers. According to a DOL investigative report obtained by The New York Times, Vietnamese workers at a garment factory in American Samoa were routinely beaten by factory guards, and one worker lost her left eye after a guard struck her. hit with a pipe. Indian workers at a food factory in Oklahoma were consistently provided with inadequate food. Many factory workers were severely malnourished and looked like “walking skeletons”.
◆ In the domestic services sector, the vast majority of service personnel are immigrants and are not recognized as employees under US law. According to US immigration policy, they are not allowed to freely move their clients, or they will be deported. Most of the victims work in very poor conditions. They are often unable to receive their wages on time and are paid below the minimum rate. They are subject to violence, sexual assault and intimidation by employers and their families, and are prohibited from reporting anyone, otherwise they will be deported. According to the 2014 report by the Urban Institute and Northeastern University, more than a third of forced labor victims in the United States are domestic workers.
◆ In the agricultural sector, about 30 percent of farmworkers and their families live below the federal poverty level. They are subject to threats, violence and forced labor, and are unable to express their wishes. The town of Immokalee in southwest Florida is known as the “tomato town” of the United States. It has a population of around 26,000 people, most of whom are farmers from countries like Mexico, Guatemala and Haiti. The local minimum wage is US$8.65 per hour. Yet those farmworkers are only paid $5.5 an hour, far less than the minimum rate.
According to a Guardian survey, foreign workers on US corn farms are not protected by law. They live in extremely precarious conditions and receive only US$225 after working 12 hours a day for 15 days. They are often victims of sexual assault, harassment, wage theft, and workplace injuries or even fatal accidents in the workplace, and are often exposed to dangerous chemicals.
Freelance journalist Gina-Marie Cheeseman noted in her 2017 report that forced labor is more common in the US than you might think on some US farms being paid. Those who try to escape are beaten.
According to a report by the American Economic Policy Institute, seasonal farmworkers in the United States are vulnerable to wage theft and other abuses due to their immigration status and fear of retaliation and deportation. Millions of dollars in back wages are reported each year. The DOL’s Wage and Hour Division is overfunded and understaffed to provide adequate protection and relief to farmworkers. As a result, those workers believe it is neither necessary nor helpful to report employer violations to the DOL.
◆ According to a 2015 New York Times survey of the nail industry in New York, the vast majority of nail industry workers are paid below minimum wage and sometimes not even they are paid. Those workers are severely exploited and subjected to various kinds of humiliation, including constant video monitoring and physical punishment. Most of these workers are immigrants from China, the Republic of Korea, Nepal and South America. They often work overtime for very low wages. Without legal residency status, many New York nail industry workers, while exploited by their employees, are often too afraid to speak out.
◆ Denise Brennan, an American writer, pointed out in her book that US immigration policy, instead of correcting the problem of human trafficking and improving the situation of vulnerable groups in society, has exacerbated social problems and has allowed more covert forms of forced labor appear. in American society. American society does not provide enough support and relief to the victims who were released from forced labor, willingly dropping them into new forced labor traps just to earn a living, and forever tormented by a vicious cycle of slavery and oppression.
◆ According to the 2021 Federal Trafficking in Persons Report released by the United States Human Trafficking Institute in June 2022, the number of criminal forced labor cases filed in 2021 increased by 22 percent from 2020. Of the Of 449 victims in human trafficking cases brought before federal courts in the United States in 2021, 162 or 36 percent were victims of forced labor. And 93 percent of identified victims in forced labor cases were foreign nationals. (more) ■
