Labor trafficking in the United States

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Labor trafficking in the United States is a form of human trafficking where victims are made to perform a task through force, fraud or coercion as it occurs in the United States. Labor trafficking is typically distinguished from sex trafficking, where the task is sexual in nature. People may be victims of both labor and sex trafficking. According to the National Human Rights Center in Berkeley, California, there are currently about 10,000 forced laborers in the U.S., around one-third of whom are domestic servants and some portion of whom are children. In reality, this number could be far higher due to the difficulty in getting exact numbers of victims, due to the secretive nature of human trafficking. The U.S. government only keeps a count of survivors, defined as victims of severe instances of human trafficking, who have been assisted by the government in acquiring immigration benefits.^[1] Research at San Diego State University estimates that there are 2.4 million victims of human trafficking among illegal Mexican immigrants.^[2] Research by the Urban Institute says that law enforcement agencies do not prioritize labor trafficking cases, were reluctant to help victims obtain authorization to legally remain in the United States, and felt there was not enough evidence to corroborate victim statements.^[3]

In 2014, the National Human Trafficking Resource Center reported 990 cases of forced labor trafficking in the US, including 172 which also involved sex trafficking. The most common types of labor trafficking included domestic work, traveling sales crews, agriculture/farms, restaurant/food service, health & beauty services, begging, retail, landscaping, hospitality, construction, carnivals, elder care, forestry, manufacturing, and housekeeping.^[4]

History

Chattel Slavery

Families sold to different purchasers 1853

Slavery had been practiced in British North America from early colonial days, and was recognized in all the Thirteen Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. By the time of the American Revolution (1775-1783), the status of slave had already become a caste associated with African ancestry, contributing to a system and legacy in which race played an influential role. At the time the United States Constitution was ratified (1789), a relatively small number of free people of color were among its voting citizens. The importation of slaves was nationally prohibited in 1808, although illegal importation—smuggling—was not unusual.^[5] Domestic slave trading, however, continued at a rapid pace, driven by demand from the growth of cotton plantations in the Deep South. More than one million slaves were sold from the Upper South, which had a surplus of labor, and taken to the Deep South in a forced migration, splitting up many families. New communities of African-American culture were developed in the Deep South, and the total slave population in the South eventually reached 4 million before liberation.^[6][7]

The start of the Civil War caused a huge disruption of the slave economy, with many slaves either escaping or being liberated by the Union armies. Due to Union measures such as the Confiscation Acts and Emancipation Proclamation, the war effectively ended slavery, even before the Thirteenth Amendment in December 1865 formally outlawed the institution throughout the United States.

Post-emancipation

In spite of the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the road to freedom remained elusive for most former slaves in the United States. While the Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the land, it is not self-enforcing, nor was the Emancipation Proclamation. The text and principles outlined in them were only words without enforcement, and so alone, they could not and did not abolish slavery. The enactment of the Thirteenth Amendment simply made slavery and all forms of involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, unconstitutional. The actual abolition of slavery – that is the full enforcement of the 13th Amendment took many decades beyond 1865 to be realized. Enforcement of the 13th amendment began during the Reconstruction period, but there were many setbacks between that time and full enforcement.

Proponents of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution knew that without legislation that codified the 13th Amendment in the form of laws and statutes along with law enforcement agencies to uphold the laws, there would be no true end to slavery, and this is the reason for the inclusion of Section 2 of the 13th Amendment authorizing Congress to establish laws upholding the amendment. The federal government also sent troops to the south to provide protection to the former slaves who were still living among their former captors.

During the Reconstruction era from January 1, 1863 to March 31, 1877, federal troops were stationed in the south specifically to keep blacks from being re-enslaved. However, in the Gilded Age that followed the withdrawal, blacks were left at the mercy of their former captors. When African Americans in the south no longer had the protection of the federal troops, whites found other ways to practice involuntary servitude

This lasted well into the 20th century, until President Lyndon B. Johnson abolished Peonage in 1966, which rapidly decreased sharecropping in every plantation nationwide. Although slavery is commonly understood to have ended with the Emancipation Proclamation, or the Thirteenth Amendment, exhaustive research conducted by journalist Douglas A. Blackmon and reported in his Pulitzer Prize winning book Slavery By Another Name shows that thousands of African Americans were re-enslaved with shocking force and brutality after the period of Reconstruction was over.

The continued involuntary servitude took various forms but the primary forms included convict leasing, peonage, and sharecropping, with the latter eventually encompassing poor whites as well and by the 1930s, they made up the vast majority. Using convict leasing programs, African American men, often guilty of no crime at all, were arrested, compelled to work without pay, repeatedly bought and sold, and coerced to do the bidding of masters. Sharecropping as it was practiced during this period often involved severe restrictions on the freedom of movement of sharecroppers who could be whipped for leaving the plantation. Both sharecropping and convict leasing were legal and tolerated by both the north and south. However, peonage was an illicit form of forced labor. Its existence was ignored by authorities while thousands of African Americans and poor Anglo Americans were subjugated and held in bondage until the mid 1960s to the late 1970s.

With the exception of cases of peonage, beyond the period of Reconstruction, the federal government took almost no action to enforce the 13th Amendment until December 1941 when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt summoned his attorney general. Five days after Pearl Harbor, at the request of the president Attorney General Francis Biddle issued Circular No. 3591 to all federal prosecutors, instructing them to actively investigate and try any case of involuntary servitude or slavery. Several months later, convict leasing was officially abolished.

During Reconstruction, it was a serious question whether slavery had been permanently abolished or whether some form of semi-slavery would appear after the Union armies left. Over time a large civil rights movement arose to bring full civil rights and equality under the law to all Americans.

Convict leasing

Convicts leased to harvest timber circa 1915, in Florida

With emancipation a legal reality, white Southerners were concerned with both controlling the newly freed slaves and keeping them in the labor force at the lowest level. The system of convict leasing began during Reconstruction and was fully implemented in the 1880s and officially ending in the last state, Alabama, in 1928. It persisted in various forms until it was abolished in 1942 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, several months after the attack on Pearl Harbor involved the U.S. in the conflict. This system allowed private contractors to purchase the services of convicts from the state or local governments for a specific time period. African Americans, due to "vigorous and selective enforcement of laws and discriminatory sentencing" made up the vast majority of the convicts leased.^[8] Writer Douglas A. Blackmon writes of the system:

It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next. But it was nonetheless slavery – a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.^[9]

The constitutional basis for convict leasing is that the Thirteenth Amendment, while abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude generally, expressly permits it as a punishment for crime.

Peonage

Peonage is a type of involuntary servitude. After the American Civil War of 1861-1865, peonage developed in the Southern United States. Poor white farmers and formerly enslaved African Americans known as freedmen who could not afford their own land would farm another person's land, exchanging labor for a share of the crops. This was called sharecropping and initially the benefits were mutual. The land owner would pay for the seeds and tools in exchange for a percentage of the money earned from the crop and a portion of the crop. As time passed, many landowners began to abuse this system. The landowner would force the tenant farmer or sharecropper to buy seeds and tools from the land owner’s store, which often had inflated prices. As sharecroppers were often illiterate, they had to depend on the books and accounting by the landowner and his staff. Other tactics included debiting expenses against the sharecropper's profits after the crop was harvested and "miscalculating" the net profit from the harvest, thereby keeping the sharecropper in perpetual debt to the landowner. Since the tenant farmers could not offset the costs, they were forced into involuntary labor due to the debts they owed the land owner.

After the U.S. Civil War, the South passed "Black Codes", laws that tried to control freed black slaves. Vagrancy laws were included in these Black Codes. Homeless or even unemployed African Americans who were between jobs, most of whom were former slaves were arrested and fined as vagrants. Usually lacking the resources to pay the fine, the "vagrant" was sent to county labor or hired out to a private employer. The authorities also tried to restrict the movement of freedmen between rural areas and cities, to between towns. Under such laws, local officials arbitrarily arrested tens of thousands of freedmen and charged them with fines and court costs of their cases. White merchants, farmers, and business owners could pay their debts and the prisoner had to work off the debt. Prisoners were leased as laborers to owners and operators of coal mines, lumber camps, brickyards, railroads, quarries, and farm plantations, with the revenues for their labor going to the states. Government officials leased imprisoned blacks and whites to small town entrepreneurs, provincial farmers, and dozens of corporations looking for cheap labor. Their labor was repeatedly bought and sold for decades after the official abolition of American slavery.^[10]

Southern states and private businesses boomed with this free labor. It is estimated that up to 40% of blacks in the South were trapped in peonage in the beginning of the 20th century. Overseers and owners often used severe deprivation, beatings, whippings, and other abuse as "discipline" against the workers.^[11]

Cartoon of Indictment of US Planters and negro peonage

After the Civil War, the Thirteenth Amendment prohibited involuntary servitude such as peonage for all but convicted criminals. Congress also passed various laws to protect the constitutional rights of Southern blacks, making those who violated such rights by conspiracy, by trespass, or in disguise, guilty of an offence punishable by ten years in prison and civil disability. Unlawful use of state law to subvert rights under the Federal Constitution was made punishable by fine or a year's imprisonment. Until the involuntary servitude was abolished by president Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966, sharecroppers in Southern states were forced to continue working to pay off old debts or to pay taxes. Southern states allowed this in order to preserve sharecropping.

The following reported Court cases involving Peonage:

• 1903 South Dakota a 17-year-old girl was reported to have been sold into peonage at the age of two by her own father^[12]
• 1904 Alabama ten persons Indicted for holding black and white persons in peonage^[13]
• 1906 John W. Pace of Alabama-the "father" of Peonage; pardoned by his friend President Theodore Roosevelt.^[14]
• 1906 Five officials of Jackson Lumber Company sentenced in Pensacola Florida to seven years in prison.^[15]
• 1916 Edward McCree of Georgia Legislature; owner of 37,000 acres of land; indicted on 13 charges. Pled guilty to first charge and paid a $1,000.00 fine.^[16]
• 1916 two men found guilty in Lexington County South Carolina of trying to force a white man into peonage; each fined $500.00 and sentenced to a year and day in jail^[17]
• 1921 Hawaiian Sugar Plantation owners try to Legalize peonage of Chinese workers.^[18]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to U.S. Department of Justice Circular No. 3591 Re: Involuntary Servitude, Slavery, and Peonage.

• 1921, Georgia farmer John S. Williams and his black overseer Clyde Manning were convicted in the deaths of 11 blacks working as peons in Williams' farm.^[19][20] Williams was the only white farmer convicted for killing black peons between 1877 and 1966.^[21]
• 1922 Convicted in 1921 for hopping a freight train without a ticket in Florida, Martin Tabert of North Dakota becomes part of State Convict leasing; he died Feb 1, 1922^[22] for being whipped for being unable to work due to illness. Reports of his death lead to outlawing of convict leasing in Florida in 1923.^[23]

Because of the Spanish tradition, peonage was still widespread in New Mexico Territory after the American Civil War. Because New Mexico laws supported peonage, the US Congress passed an anti-peonage law on March 2, 1867 as follows: "Sec 1990. The holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage is abolished and forever prohibited in the territory of New Mexico, or in any other territory or state of the United States; and all acts, laws, … made to establish, maintain, or enforce, directly or indirectly, the voluntary or involuntary service or labour of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise, are declared null and void."^[24] The current version of this statute is codified at Chapter 21-I of 42 U.S.C. § 1994 and makes no specific mention of New Mexico.

With the Peonage Act of 1867, Congress abolished "the holding of any person to service or labor under the system known as peonage",^[25] specifically banning "the voluntary or involuntary service or labor of any persons as peons, in liquidation of any debt or obligation, or otherwise."^[26]

In 1939, the Department of Justice created the Civil Rights Section, which focused primarily on First Amendment and labor rights.^[27] The increasing scrutiny of totalitarianism in the lead-up to World War II brought increased attention to issues of slavery and involuntary servitude, abroad and at home.^[28] The U.S. sought to counter foreign propaganda and increase its credibility on the race issue by combatting the Southern peonage system.^[29] Under the leadership of Attorney General Francis Biddle, the Civil Rights Section invoked the constitutional amendments and legislation of the Reconstruction Era as the basis for its actions.^[30]

In 1947, the DOJ successfully prosecuted Elizabeth Ingalls for keeping domestic servant Dora L. Jones in conditions of slavery. The court found that Jones "was a person wholly subject to the will of defendant; that she was one who had no freedom of action and whose person and services were wholly under the control of defendant and who was in a state of enforced compulsory service to the defendant."^[31] The Thirteenth Amendment enjoyed a swell of attention during this period, but from Brown v. Board (1954) until Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer Co. (1968) it was again eclipsed by the Fourteenth Amendment.^[32]

Truck system

A truck system, in the specific sense in which the term is used by labor historians, refers to an unpopular or even exploitative form of payment associated with small, isolated and/or rural communities, in which workers or self-employed small producers are paid in either: goods, a form of payment known as truck wages, or; tokens, private currency or direct credit, to be used at a company store, owned by their employers. A specific kind of truck system, in which credit advances are made against future work is known as debt bondage.

Under this system, workers were not paid cash; rather they were paid with non-transferable credit vouchers which could be exchanged only for goods sold at the company store. This made it impossible for workers to store up cash savings. Workers also usually lived in company-owned dormitories or houses, the rent for which was automatically deducted from their pay. In the United States the truck system and associated debt bondage persisted until the strikes of the newly formed United Mine Workers and affiliated unions forced an end to such practices.

Agriculture

In the agriculture sector, the most common victims of trafficking are U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents, undocumented immigrants, and foreign nationals with temporary H-2A visas.^[33] Due to the nature of agricultural work as being seasonal and transient, the ability of employers to exploit these workers is high. Such exploitation may take the form of threats of violence and playing on vulnerabilities (i.e. immigration status). In some cases, workers are held in a state of perpetual debt to the crew leaders who impose mandatory transportation, housing and communication fees upon the workers which are high in relation to pay received, therefore further indebting the worker. Crew leaders may also provide workers with H-2A visas and transportation to the place of work from a home country.

In 2010, the company Global Horizons was indicted on charges of trafficking more than 400 Thai workers through a program of bonded labor. Charges were ultimately dropped in 2012.^[34]

Domestic labor

Domestic servitude is the forced employment of someone as a maid or nanny, and victims are often migrant women who come from low-wage communities in their home countries.^[35] Domestic workers perform duties such as cleaning, cooking and childcare in their employers home. Domestic workers are commonly US citizens, undocumented workers or foreign nationals most commonly holding one of the following visa types: A-3, G-5,NATO-7 or B-1^[36] The most common victims of this type of trafficking are women. Similar means of control to Agricultural Work are common. Additionally, a lack of legislation regarding the duties and protection of these workers facilitates their exploitation. Employers commonly use the workers lack of knowledge of the language or legal system as a means of control and intimidation. This is also commonly paired with various forms of abuse and/or passport revocation. Many domestic workers are brought to the United States on a promise of a better life or an education.^[37] Traffickers are usually married couples from the same country of origin as the trafficked person,^[38] and are usually not involved in organized criminal networks,^[39] making it more difficult to identify instances of this type of trafficking. Perpetrators of domestic servitude are often well-respected members of their communities and lead otherwise normal lives.^[39] Areas with large middle-class and upper-middle-class populations are commonly the destinations of this type of trafficking.^[35]

The Associated Press reports, based on interviews in California and Egypt, that trafficking of children for domestic labor in the U.S. includes an extension of an illegal but common practice in Africa. Families in remote villages send their daughters to work in cities for extra money and the opportunity to escape a dead-end life. Some girls work for free on the understanding that they at least will be better fed in the home of their employer. This custom has led to the spread of trafficking, as well-to-do Africans accustomed to employing children immigrate into the U.S.^[40]

Legally employed domestic workers are distinct from illegally employed domestic servants. While legally employed domestic house workers are fairly compensated for their work in accordance with national wage laws, domestic servants are typically forced to work extremely long hours for little to no monetary compensation, and psychological and physical means are employed to limit their mobility and freedom.^[35] In addition, deportation threats are often used to discourage internationally trafficked persons from seeking help.^[35]

Traveling sales crew

Traveling sales crews have the highest rate of labor trafficking after domestic labor. The traveling nature makes it easier for traffickers to control their victims' sleeping arrangements and food and to alienate them from outside contact. Traffickers may withhold food or threaten to abandon their victims in unfamiliar locations without money if they do not comply. Unlike other professions, members of traveling sales crews are considered independent contractors even if they do not have any autonomy in their life outside of work. As independent contractors, they are not overseen by several laws meant to prevent abuse, such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Victims often incur debt from their traffickers, and enter into a form of debt slavery.^[41]

Malinda’s Traveling Sales Crew Protection Act

Malinda’s Traveling Sales Crew Protection Act^[42] is a Wisconsin law that gives traveling sales crew members similar employment rights as part-time workers in Wisconsin are currently guaranteed by state law. It also requires all crews to register with the Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection before going door to door in state communities. By registering members of the crew, alerts for members with outstanding warrants in other states can be identified and criminals detained.^[43] It is the only law in the United states that regulates traveling sales crews.^[41] Wisconsin governor James E. Doyle says the intent of the law is to "stop companies from putting workers in dangerous and unfair conditions". The bill was passed in a form that applies only to sales workers who travel in groups of two or more.^[44] It was authored by Jon Erpenbach.^[43] Southwestern Advantage lobbied against the bill, argueing that their independent contractor business model nurtured the entrepreneurial spirit.^[45][46] During the hearings, former Southwestern student dealers testified on both sides of the issue.^[47]

Media

• The actress Julie Parrish appeared as Mariana Jaramilio in the 1967 episode "Along Came Mariana" of the syndicated television series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Robert Taylor. In the story line, Mariana works against great odds and tradition to unravel the peonage system in the New Mexico Territory.^[48]
• Sixteen Tons is a song by Tennessee Ernie Ford about debt bondage under the truck system among coal miners in Kentucky in the early 1900s. The practice was since made illegal and is considered a form of labor trafficking.
• The Men of Atalissa is a documentary film by POV.org and The New York Times^[49] about 32 intellectually challenged people who were employed by Texas-based Henry’s Turkey Service without proper compensation, and were abused physically and mentally, living in harsh conditions, at Atalissa, Iowa for more than 30 years beginning in the 1970s. The men, paid a wage of $65 a month and sheltered in an old uphill schoolhouse, were used for meat processing. Their conditions were made public in 2009 leading to a $240 million jury verdict, subsequently reduced to $50,000 per person. The documentary is based on court records and internal documents of the company and features first-time interviews with seven of the victims.^[50]
• In October 1910 Florida sugar cane plantation planter Edgar Watson^[51] was shot and killed by his own neighbors; according to legend he would use peonage Native American and Negro help and then would "pay" his workers by killing them.^[52] His story was fictionalized by writer Peter Matthiessen in his Lost River Trilogy later remade into Shadow Country
• Boy Slaves is an exposé of child labor. Children entrapped in peonage strike for better food, try to alert the government, but fail in these attempts.
• Manderlay is a movie set in the early 1930s, which tells the story of Grace, an idealist who attempts to oust the owners of a plantation in Alabama and free the slaves living there.
• Slavery by Another Name is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008.^[53] It explores the forced labor of imprisoned black men and women through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States. The resulting book was well received by critics and became a New York Times Best Seller. In 2009, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction, and in 2011, was adapted into a documentary film for PBS.
• Call + Response is a documentary film released in 2008 by Fair Trade Pictures to support human rights activism against human trafficking and slavery on a community level. The film was Justin Dillon’s directorial debut and has received worldwide recognition, becoming one of the most important devices in spurring the modern-day abolitionist movement and was one of the year’s top documentaries.

See also

• Sharecropping in the United States
• Convict lease
• Peon
• Labor history of the United States

References