Is Grocery Shopping Supporting Labor Trafficking?

The next time you sit down to dinner, will you wonder if the food you are eating was produced as a result of U.S. labor trafficking? Consumers often are unwitting supporters of labor traffickers.

This summer the Ohio chicken industry was the focus of a labor trafficking raid.  In July, a chicken farm in Marion, Ohio was raided and ten individuals were found to be living in deplorable conditions and working without pay.  The Guatemalan natives, eight minor teens, one only 14 years old, and two adults were smuggled into the U.S. by two traffickers, one Guatemalan and one Mexican man.  As is typical, the workers were brought into the U.S. with promises of work for pay.  The traffickers kept the workers' pay and used threats of physical harm to keep the workers silent.  The company, Trillium Farms, reported to have cooperated in planning the raid with the FBI, stated that it used outside labor contractors and was not aware that the workers were trafficked.  The two traffickers pleaded guilty to various crimes. The employer, Trillium Farms, has not been charged.

Trillium claims to be the largest egg farm corporation in the Ohio.  The company regularly advertises for work and directs applicants to its Human Resources department.  Reliance upon third parties to secure workers is not unusual in any industry, however.  In labor intensive ones, employers may use contractors as a way of avoiding liability for employing undocumented workers, but the scheme also permits slave trafficking to flourish.  Simply being unaware that employees are trafficked cannot be an acceptable defense.  When a company is unaware, that usually means that there is combination of lack of human trafficking training as a priority for all employees, and a "hands off" policy in terms of middle management interaction with those whom the contractors bring to work.

What we have not heard from Trillium is how the company will ensure that traffickers are not engaged in the future.

According to a government report issued this summer, only 15% of global trafficking convictions in 2014 involved labor trafficking.  Yet it is estimated that non-sex labor trafficking schemes far outweigh the number of sex trafficking ones in the number of individuals trafficked.  Something has to change in government's approach to prosecuting and ending labor trafficking.  A good beginning might be for U.S. corporations to be held strictly liable for the use of trafficked workers.  Corporate liability, along with the resulting publicity, might ensure hiring and supervision policies that effectively eliminate trafficked workers.  

Mitigating factors might be affirmative efforts by employers who discover trafficking to work with the government to free the individuals.  In addition, and more importantly to the workers, would be for the employers to provide employment and to obtain housing, documented status and other supports to those workers discovered to be slaves.