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A few years ago, I stepped into an unbearably hot and oppressive shrimp processing facility in Samut Sakhon, just south-west of Bangkok. Scores of workers toiled feverishly to process mountains of shrimp for export to the US and EU. Most had been trafficked to the facility from nearby Burma and Cambodia. They toiled like automatons, processing shrimp around the clock.
The workers were exhausted and malnourished, and almost all were kept in a state of debt bondage, with most of their "wages" deducted for exorbitant room, board and other expenses. One worker showed me his cramped, blistered fingers and said: "My hands pain [me] so much, but I must work like a machine or the guards will beat me."
Such is the reality for tens of millions of workers at the bottom of the global economy's supply chains. Most individuals are exploited in brutal working conditions and paid paltry wages. In the worst cases, the workers are exploited in conditions of outright slavery. They are beaten, abused, tortured or worse. The underbelly of the global economy has become a dark, brutish realm in which under-regulated labour markets provide minimised production costs for dozens of commodities exported around the world.
Nowadays, you can traffic someone any distance, and at minimal cost, inside a day – generating thousands, tens of thousands – or, in the case of sex-trafficking, hundreds of thousands – of dollars a year for each slave.
In the International Labour Organisation's May 2014 report, Profit and Poverty: The Economics of Forced Labour, it is estimated that $150bn (£892m) in profits is generated annually from forced labour. Hundreds of billions of dollars more are generated by child labourers and other workers who are exploited in severely harmful and abusive conditions.
On average, a forced labourer generates about $8,000 profit annually for his or her exploiters. I calculate the average one-off cost of a slave today is $450. The transformation of the global slave trade from a high-cost, slow-recruitment business to a low-cost, rapid-recruitment one is driving criminal interest in trafficking and slavery, which is why it is permeating every corner of the global economy.
These profits feed into every level of a commodity's supply chain – from the local factory owner, to the middlemen and wholesalers, all the way to retailers in developed economies seeking to be competitive on price for consumers who demand the lowest cost possible. The vulnerable and desperate of the world have become an expendable sub-class of people whose labour is extracted in slave-like conditions in order to feed cheap goods – from seafood and rice to tea and coffee, minerals and apparel to mobile phones and commercial sex – into the global economy.
That slavery continues almost three centuries after the first attempts to eliminate it represents a catastrophic failure of capitalism and civilisation. Human rights, reason, justice and fairness have little meaning for the most vulnerable and desperate, who are chewed up and spat out by the global economy.
What would a system free of these abuses look like? Is it even possible? I believe it is, subject to certain conditions.
First, specially trained research teams must document the production base of each commodity through every level of its supply chain. This will reveal the extent to which supply is tainted by slavery and child labour. The first model of this process was outlined in a report I published through Harvard University, Tainted Carpets: Slavery and Child Labour in India's Handmade Carpet Sector.
A multi-stakeholder team consisting of industry, government, academics and NGOs could then use this data to craft a response focused on eliminating slave-like labour from the supply chain on a reliable and sustained basis. Elements of an effective response would differ from one commodity to another, but a necessary constant would be a system of independent, third-party certification.
To provide reliable and independent certification, these systems would need to be designed on a commodity-specific basis. Some such certification regimes exist, but few – if any – go beyond the first tier or two of a supply chain, or are properly independent. Governments and industry would have to support these efforts, and academics and NGOs would need to assist with design, as well as monitoring and measuring results. Once reliable certification and product labelling were in place, consumers could make enlightened choices to purchase goods untainted by slavery, child labour, or other forms of extreme exploitation.
Next, industry would need to invest in the development, education, health and security of the communities whose low-cost labour they source. Doing so would help mitigate vulnerability to being trafficked and exploited. Industry has every right to avail itself of less expensive labour pools, but that right is accompanied by an obligation to invest in those communities, mitigating their impoverishment and vulnerability.
With these and other efforts, we could achieve a more ethical and sustainable global economy. Consumers may have to pay slightly more for certain goods, and multinational corporations may have to accept slightly lower profits. But a freer and fairer labour environment would promote greater productivity, potentially offsetting some of those expenses.
For the past quarter of a century, the global economy has brought many benefits to the world through greater flows in goods, capital and people. But the poorest of the poor have increasingly become an exploited labour class toiling in murky factories, mines and fields to feed our insatiable appetites. In this way, we are all shareholders in a system of slavery found in numerous global supply chains. We must ask ourselves how much longer we will look the other way while millions toil in slave-like conditions to provide us with the goods and services we consume.
• Siddharth Kara is the author of Bonded Labour: Tackling the System of Slavery in South Asia, and directs the programme on human trafficking and modern slavery at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.
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