Labor trafficking stands out among the most brutal features of capitalist society. Millions around the world are held in forced servitude, and traded like property among the global elite.
An untold number of workers have been trafficked, obtained abroad or even within the United States, and held in compelled labor. According to the U.S. government, between 14,500 and 17,500 people are trafficked into slavery in the United States every year, with foreign survivors more often found in labor than sex trafficking.
Some of these workers have been trafficked by government officials themselves—foreign diplomats and employees of embassies and consulates. A 2008 U.S. government study found 42 allegations of abuse and modern-day slavery of domestic workers by foreign diplomats and noted that the number is likely higher. Trafficked female domestic workers, isolated in diplomats’ and other employers’ homes, suffer inhumanely low or even no wages, extremely long hours and no days off.
One organization fighting against labor trafficking is Damayan, a grassroots organization of and for Filipino immigrant workers and against labor trafficking in New York City and Jersey City. One Damayan member, working for a foreign diplomat, recounted how her nose bled every morning from lack of rest after working from 6:00 a.m. to midnight every day with no days off.
How are women compelled to do this? By fraudulent agencies and employment contracts, false promises to adjust immigration status, stolen passports and identification, threats of deportation or harm to the worker or her family, verbal and emotional manipulation and abuse, and restricted communication with others outside of the family. One foreign diplomat told another Damayan member that if she opened the door to the house from the inside, the alarm would sound and police would arrive to take her away.
If trafficked domestic workers are modern-day slaves, who are the modern-day slave masters? In the United States, the demand for this labor is not going away. While U.S. corporations outsourced jobs overseas in search of cheaper labor long ago, domestic work has stayed because it cannot be outsourced.
Especially since the 1970s, immigrant women filled the need for domestic work, an industry in which workers remain largely undocumented and threatened with deportation, isolated and hidden in private households. Employers who want slave labor in their homes do not need chains and a whip. They have racist, anti-immigrant policies and lack of labor protections on their side. Foreign diplomats do not need even these legal structures—they are protected from prosecution and civil lawsuits by diplomatic immunity.
Labor trafficking a symptom of imperialism
Labor traffickers are only able to carry out their brutal crimes because they can take advantage of the desperation of poor and working people in countries subject to imperialist exploitation.
Imperialism is not simply a policy choice made by politicians; it is a stage in the development of capitalism. Capitalism is an expand-or-die system, and, when capitalists run out of workers and resources to exploit in their home markets, they are compelled to plunder the rest of the world. This is backed up by the military forces of the imperialist countries, an exclusive club anchored by the United States.
The countries that fall under the domination, direct or indirect, of the imperialist powers are prevented from developing economically. They are integrated into the world capitalist market in a way that is most profitable for the imperialists, without regard for the needs of the local economy, much less the poor and working people of that country.
Oftentimes, this means that oppressed countries are forced to be dependent on very few or even one economic activity. Raw materials are simply exported for use elsewhere, and the global supply chain is broken up so that exploited countries almost never add value to their own natural resources. At the same time, institutions like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank give out predatory loans to bury the targeted countries in debt, cementing their dependence on the advanced capitalist countries.
Whatever the particular situation is, the wealth and labor of the countries that are oppressed by imperialism are used to promote the development of the imperialist powers, not their own. This is a phenomenon called underdevelopment. Unable to provide for themselves and their families in an underdeveloped economy, victims of modern day slavery are easy targets for labor traffickers. Like their countries’ wealth, they are kidnapped and taken to the centers of world imperialism.
Take, for example, the Philippine economy. Like other economies in the Global South, it has grown ever more dependent on migrant workers sending money home. The Philippines government long ago figured out that traditional agricultural exports like rice are unstable, but that the export of people—labor—is not only stable, but profitable.
The result: The Philippines is the fourth most remittance-dependent country in the world, with the highest income inequality in Southeast Asia. A commonly known fact among Filipino migrant workers is that if all overseas workers stopped sending money home to the Philippines, its economy would collapse in fewer than three days.
A similar situation can be found in many countries. According to the World Bank and the International Organization for Migration, the number of international migrants in the world has increased rapidly over the last few decades. In 2010, worldwide remittance flows are estimated to have exceeded $440 billion, with developing countries receiving the bulk.
Fighting against labor trafficking is an important front in the global struggle of working and oppressed people for justice and liberation. In this time of global economic crisis, exposing corporate greed and the failures of capitalism, it is all the more urgent to fight to end modern-day slavery.
