Last updated April 9th, 2020

Labor trafficking and forced labor exploitation are closely related. Trafficking victims are frequently also victims of forced labor exploitation and other forms of abuse, including wage theft. Labor trafficking is a crime under both Federal and international law. While some states in the United States including Minnesota have laws criminalizing labor exploitation, it is most frequently handled by administrative enforcement agencies or through private civil suits.

Labor trafficking and forced labor exploitation are international human rights violations. The International Labor Organization (ILO) brings together governments, employers, and workers from 187 member states to create fair labor standards, including preventing labor trafficking and forced labor. The United Nations has also established a Protocol to Prevent, Suppress, and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, known as the Palermo Protocol.

The ILO Forced Labor Convention of 1930, updated in 2016 with a new Forced Labor Protocol, defines forced or compulsory labor as “all work or service which is exacted from any person under the threat of any penalty and for which the person has not offered himself or herself voluntarily”[1] which includes “traditional practices of forced labour, such as vestiges of slavery or slave-like practices, and various forms of debt bondage, as well as new forms of forced labour that have emerged in recent decades, such as human trafficking.”[2] The most recent global estimates suggest that 21 million people are victims of forced labor.[3]

Labor trafficking occurs when an employer compels or deceives a worker into providing involuntary labor. The employer often uses violence, threats, manipulation of debt, blackmail, or fraud to compel victims to work. Typically, such work takes place in abusive conditions, such as an unsafe work environment, long hours without breaks, or work without pay. Forced labor exploitation occurs when employers profit from the illegal treatment of their workers. One of the most common forms of labor exploitation is the denial of fair pay, also known as “wage theft.” Wage theft is also a key component of labor trafficking, since traffickers frequently use their control over their victims to cut their wages or to stop paying wages altogether.

Labor trafficking and forced labor exploitation are not identical, though it is now widely accepted that trafficking can occur when people are forced to work in their place of origin. Labor trafficking can occur even when a person escapes or is rescued before actually doing the work they were coerced into, while forced labor involves actually performing the work.[4]

The forms of coercion associated with forced labor resulting from trafficking include “confiscation of personal identity documents, the threat of denunciation of irregular migrants to the authorities in the host country, deception of a trafficked person about the type of work he or she will eventually undertake, and withholding of wages over prolonged periods.”[5]

A range of socio-economic factors including poverty, education, and immigration status make certain populations more vulnerable to labor trafficking and forced labor exploitation. Migrant workers, for instance, are at high risk for labor trafficking and forced labor exploitation. Smugglers who act as recruiters may exploit them during their journey across national borders, or traffickers may target them once they reach their destination. Migrant workers are also vulnerable to labor trafficking and forced labor “due to language barriers, challenges of social integration, and unscrupulous employers, landlords, and service providers who may take advantage of their limited knowledge of local conditions and reduced bargaining power.”[6]

It is common for traffickers to control migrant workers by threatening to call immigration authorities to report their legal status, or by taking and withholding their immigration documents. Some sponsorships, known as “tied” visa programs, bring migrant workers across borders as guest workers under temporary work visas. These programs significantly limit a worker’s protections and ability to report violations of their rights because their legal status is tied directly to their employer.[7]

Women and girls are also particularly vulnerable to labor trafficking and forced labor. Women are disproportionately affected by sex trafficking, for instance. Domestic violence can drive women to seek work as a way to survive or to accept working conditions they otherwise would not. Women and girls also have lower levels of education worldwide than men, and as a result, they have fewer job opportunities and are at a heightened risk of exploitation.

Debt Bondage

The ILO defines debt bondage as a form of forced labor in which “labourers (sometimes with their families) are forced to work for an employer in order to pay off their own debts or those they have inherited.”[8] According to End Slavery Now, it is common that an employer charges interest while the work is going on, such that it becomes impossible to pay off the debt. Moreover, because debt can pass down from generation to generation, debt bondage often leads to a chain of forced labor that is very difficult to break.[9]

Like labor trafficking and forced labor, debt bondage is exacerbated by a variety of factors that disproportionately affect poor and migrant workers. Poor families may be forced to take out loans in order to survive or respond to a crisis such as an injury or natural disaster. Due to limited access to social protection as well as inadequate education on and access to formal credit markets, their only recourse is to borrow from lenders who exploit them by forcing them to work to repay their debt. Often, these lenders use violence or other cruel and unusual punishment to force victims to work.[10] Migrant workers are particularly vulnerable to forced labor in return for debt incurred by making the journey across borders.

Labor Sectors

Labor trafficking and forced labor occur more frequently in certain labor sectors, including the domestic sector, construction, accommodation and food service, the agricultural sector, and the garment industry. The ILO has identified tea and cocoa, sugar, palm oil, production of electronic goods, cotton, mining, and fishing as the specific sectors where debt bondage occurs most frequently.[11] Women and girls represent the majority of workers in these industries, and as a result, they are disproportionately affected by labor trafficking and forced labor.

In 2017, the ILO released its most comprehensive estimate on modern slavery, finding that more than 15.9 million people were victims of forced labor exploitation at any moment in 2016.[12] Around 58% of those individuals—9.2 million—are women and girls.[13] Focusing on forced labor exploitation, the ILO estimates that 24% of victims—around 3.8 million—are in domestic work, and of those 3.8 million, 61%, or 2.3 million are women and girls.[14] 92% of victims of forced labor exploitation in accommodation and food service are women and girls.[15] As 10% of total labor exploitation - about 1.6 million individuals - is in accommodation and food service, 1.5 million women and girls are victims of labor exploitation in this sector.[16]

One of the driving factors that places women at risk of labor trafficking and labor exploitation is that—because women are denied equal access to education and economic and social opportunities—they disproportionally work in the informal labor sector which lacks basic labor protections. Globally, women and girls receive very low levels of education which reduces their future job prospects and makes them more vulnerable to labor trafficking and forced labor.[17] Women are funneled into childcare, domestic work, janitorial services, garment manufacturing, and agriculture, where they often are isolated and subject to long hours with little to no pay.[18] Additionally, “[e]xploited labourers are unlikely to be offered adequate training (in a language they understand) or personal protective equipment to, for example, use heavy equipment, work at heights or with harsh chemicals, or to do repetitive tasks (e.g., bending, lifting).”[19]

The high rate of women and girls experiencing forced domestic labor exploitation is driven by “the demand for cheap and exploitable household help, a lack of legal protections for domestic workers, and an absence of monitoring agencies.”[20] Due to the private nature of domestic work, however, it is difficult to detect instances of forced labor exploitation and trafficking. The hidden nature of domestic work and lack of formal legal protections are further compounded by the chronic undervaluing of domestic work. Domestic work is often seen “more as a set of chores bounded in gendered relations of interpersonal trust and less as remunerated work.”[21] For women especially, forced domestic labor is often linked to forced marriage [internal link] and sexual exploitation [internal link].

In the United States, labor laws do not apply to domestic workers, which means they are unprotected from unsafe working conditions, being denied overtime pay (for live-in domestic workers), and from workplace discrimination.[22] In 2011, the ILO issued C189, a treaty to protect domestic workers internationally. 25 countries have ratified the treaty though the United States has not.[23] Most domestic workers in the United States are women and either immigrants or foreign-born nationals. They may be recruited for domestic work with the promise of good pay and working conditions, but find when they arrive that they are expected to work long hours with little pay or take on tasks outside of their original job description.[24] Domestic workers also report a decline in their health due to toxic chemicals in housecleaning products. Moreover, a large percent do not receive healthcare benefits or paid sick leave.[25]

As with domestic work, forced labor exploitation in the agricultural sector is propelled by “the absence of labor standards and regulations in the industry, and to the increasing number of undocumented immigrant farm workers that have no legal protection.”[26] Forced child labor is very common in global supply chains such as palm oil, sugar, and cotton,[27] while experts have identified the tobacco industry as a sector in the United States that often involves labor trafficking. In the United States, many migrant workers are funneled into forced labor in the agricultural sector, often as a form of debt bondage. Foreign labor recruiters bring many of them to the United States to work under a temporary work visa. Workers report receiving false information during the recruiting process and being forced to pay fees to obtain work visas.[28] Victims of trafficking in agriculture who called the Polaris national hotline experienced economic abuse such as “wage theft, improper deductions, and payment at piece rates rather than hourly rates.”[29] Traffickers in the agricultural sector also have the ability to isolate victims in a rural area and subject them to inhuman living conditions or deny them protection from pesticides.[30]

Individuals forced to work in apparel manufacturing endure harsh conditions, including long hours for low and inconsistent—if any—pay, as well as harassment and abuse and poor compliance with health and safety standards.[31] The locations in which these individuals work have a large effect on their experience. When individuals are far from home, they are dependent on their employers for food, housing, and transportation.[32] Smaller, more isolated sites are less likely to be inspected for labor, health, and safety violations.[33] Further, forced labor exploitation in garment manufacturing can occur in the victims’ homes. In an effort to cut costs, some manufacturers contract with women who weave, cut, or sew in their own homes, creating an even larger vacuum for protections.[34]

A case study on garment workers in India, for example, showed that working from home as sub-contractors exposes workers to wage theft and excludes them from receiving benefits and protection under Indian Law. 95.5 percent of the almost 1500 workers interviewed were women and belonged to a marginalized caste. India exports garments to several major apparel companies in the United States and Europe. Though the apparel companies are careful to regulate their factories, they do not extend those regulations to sub-contractors working from home, leaving these women vulnerable to exploitation.[35]