Experts from Brazil and the United States gathered to discuss innovative solutions to worker exploitation at a recent one-day conference hosted by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations.

by Catherine Schuknecht 

UCLA International Institute, June 3, 2015 — Chris Tilly, director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) and a professor in the departments of urban planning and sociology, opened the “Out of the Shadows” conference on April 24, noting that the event had been “sparked by two competing realities: the prevalence of forced labor . . . [and] efforts to combat it at the federal and state and local and global [levels].”

The one-day conference was hosted by the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations and cosponsored by the International Labour Organization (ILO), the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S.-based foundation, Humanity United. Featured speakers included top experts from Brazil and the United States, who discussed multidisciplinary solutions to the global epidemic of forced labor and other forms of worker exploitation.

Presented in tandem with a parallel conference in Washington, DC, the meeting sought to produce innovative and collaborative solutions to the wide range of issues associated with worker exploitation, including unethical recruitment, trafficking, child labor, wage theft and forced labor.

Background

According to research conducted by the ILO, 21 million people around the globe are victims of forced labor practices. And each year, forced labor produces 150 billion dollars in illegal profits.

“Imagine what 150 billion dollars would do to the economies of many of the countries where there are these victims of extraordinary exploitation,” said Maria Durazo, International Union Vice President for Civil Rights, Diversity and Immigration at UNITE HERE, a labor union that represents 270,000 working people across North America.

Recent steps to combat worker exploitation include the new ILO Protocol on Forced Labor adopted in June 2014 at the 103rd ILO Conference in Geneva, which was attended by more than 4,700 government, worker and employer representatives. The Protocol is a legally binding document aimed at improving prevention, protection and compensation measures.

Brazil and the United States have been leaders in the fight against forced labor, boasting some of the most comprehensive, multilevel efforts to end worker exploitation. For example, Brazil’s National Plan for the Eradication of Forced Labor, launched in 1995, is an ILO-supported initiative that pursues a combination of civil enforcement strategies, prevention methods and victim reintegration programs. Within Brazil, São Paulo State has begun efforts to revoke business licenses on the basis of judicial findings of forced labor.

In the United States, the Trafficking Victims Protection Act was initiated in 2000 and updated in 2013. It aims to implement prevention, protection and prosecution measures related to forced labor. And President Obama’s Executive Order 13627 (2012) strengthens protections against human trafficking in federal contractor supply chains. California also recently enacted a new state law that discourages subcontracting and bars foreign labor recruiters from demanding fees from their employees.

In addition to policy innovations, public awareness of worker exploitation has also increased in recent years. “[Forced labor] is increasingly seen as one of the most egregious and pressing human rights problems. . . that we face,” observed Ed Marcum, Vice President for Investments at Humanity United. “There's [also] been some exceptional media coverage . . . that is very much resonating and capturing the attention of the corporate world.”

Multilevel, multidisciplinary solutions required

The day’s first panel, moderated by U.S. Department of Labor Senior Policy Advisor Ernesto Archila, explored federal, state and local strategies for reducing forced labor and assessed policies already in place in the United States and Brazil. The panelists agreed that tackling worker exploitation requires a multilevel approach, with particular emphasis on civil enforcement.

“Ultimately. . . there has to be a price for this type of practice, and civil remedies create that price,” explained Anna Park, a regional attorney for the Los Angeles District Office of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Senator Carlos Bezerra (São Paulo State, Brazil) agreed, adding that accountability measures are particularly important because companies that use forced labor in Brazil take in 200 percent more profits than companies that pay their workers fair wages.

Jessica Owen, Deputy Attorney General in the Honors Program of the California Department of Justice, agreed that criminal law enforcement is the key to creating accountability measures for companies. “To help enforce criminal laws that exist at both the federal and state level, [the Criminal Division of the Department of Justice] has started to impose a series of labor trafficking trainings in coordination with U.S. Attorneys’ Offices across California,” she remarked.

The training program helps train government employees and federal workers — for example, restaurant inspectors — to look for and recognize key signs of human trafficking. In Brazil, remarked Bezerra, this type of local-level work is critical because the country’s judicial system has limited resources and rarely convicts offenders.

Ruben Rosalez, regional director of the U.S. Department of Labor Wage and Hour Division, and Judith Cavalcanti, of Brazil’s Human Rights Secretariat, addressed additional state and local government efforts to combat forced labor in the United States and Brazil.

Later conference panels examined global supply chains, labor markets and new approaches to improving workers’ rights and featured such speakers as Max Tuñón, senior program officer and coordinator of the GMS Triangle project at the ILO; Cara Chacon, director of social and environmental responsibility at Patagonia; Stephanie Richard, director of policy and legal services at the Coalition to Abolish Slavery & Trafficking; Mercia Silva, executive coordinator of the National Pact Institute for the Eradication of Forced Labor(InPacto); Brazilian journalist Leonardo Sakamoto; Roni Barbosa, president of InPacto; and Pablo Alvarado, executive director of the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.

The event’s final session, moderated by the director of the ILO in Washington, DC, Nancy Donaldson, synthesized the potential policy ideas discussed at the conference, with analysis provided by Chris Tilly, director of IRLE at UCLA; Houtan Homayounpour, senior program and operations officer for the Special Action Program Combatting Forced Labor at the ILO; Shawna Bader Blau, executive director of the Solidarity Center; and Siddharth Kara, director of the Program on Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Speakers at all four panels agreed on one key point: gaining worker trust is essential for the success of any multidisciplinary solution to worker exploitation. As Valenzuela explained, “[It] is extremely difficult to get worker buy in [and] to get them to participate in other collaborative efforts.”

“Building worker trust is crucial for us because a lot of our cases are built on cooperation with the workers,” agreed Archila. “If we don't have their trust, we don't have a case.”

Published: Wednesday, June 3, 2015