Slavery is a business reality, and it’s up to companies to stop it

Toronto Globe And Mail ^ | Oct. 29 2014, 1:59 PM EDT | (Reuters)

[Olog-hai]

There are more slaves now than at any point in history, and companies need to look closely at their supply chains to ensure their products or services aren’t coming from operations that force people to work with no pay, a U.S. writer and private-equity executive said during a recent financial and risk summit in Toronto hosted by media and information firm Thomson Reuters. […]

People often think of slavery as a thing of the past, but today there are an estimated 27 million slaves worldwide—most of them toiling for nothing more than a meager daily meal, (Benjamin) Skinner said. He plotted on a map where most of these slaves can be found today: India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka. […]

But slavery isn’t restricted to countries on other continents, Skinner said. It’s also a problem in North America, especially among people in marginalized communities who may not speak English or French and who don’t have the proper documents to live and work in the United States or Canada.

Slave labor is a business reality, he said, and it often becomes part of a company’s supply chains either because it has failed to do the proper due diligence on its vendors, or worse, because it has willfully turned a blind eye to the problem. …

[Sherman Logan]

Sorry, but this is nonsense. Slavery isn’t a low or no wage job.

It’s a legal status enforced by the power of the state. Individuals who are forced to work without pay aren’t slaves, they’re victims of kidnappers and criminals.

There are a few slaves left in the world, but in most all countries the law does not countenance it. In practice, as throughout history, powerful men often get away with breaking the law, but I’m unclear what we’re supposed to do about that.

[re_nortex]

Slavery exists today in two virulent forms. The minimum wage and unionism. Abolish those two evils and profits will soar. China will resume its rightful place as third world backwater. Let freedom ring! Crush unions! Exterminate the minimum wage!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Is this speaking of meager, hardscrabble workers in general or of people who are someone else’s literal possession?

It does the humanitarian (and spiritual) plight of the latter no justice to generalize it to the former.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Both are silly assertions. Those may be unwise arrangements but slavery they are not.

[re_nortex]

Why Minimum Wage Means Maximum Slavery

[HiTech RedNeck]

Can only arrive at its conclusion via distortion, and I know that before even looking.

[re_nortex]

Well then good FRiend, you ought to rethink the graphic on your About page which I have reproduced here:

[HiTech RedNeck]

Tyranny, slavery, murder, what these are all bad things let us rail about them as though they were the same!

[Olog-hai]

Well, this is mentioned, of the Indias:

“In these countries (India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka), what you see in massive numbers in many cases are entire villages held in what the United Nations calls collateralized hereditary debt bondage—people held to a debt they themselves didn’t take,” (Benjamin) Skinner explained. “I found some individuals and families working off debts that date several generations back, and they were still working in rock quarries from sunup to sundown, breaking rocks and turning gravel that are produced into silica sand.” …

And that of course is in a mix of Islamic and socialist countries: India is a “sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic” according to its own constitution; Nepal’s government was autocratic for a long time but now even worse with the Maoists in control; the “Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka” is currently run by the socialistic Sri Lanka Freedom Party; and we all know about Pakistan.

Not a stretch to presume that the same applies to other Islamic and socialist countries in the third world who are merely crawling up to second world status and vehemently hate the first world.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Please don’t get this mixed up with first world problems, however.

Some of it is psychological. People are persuaded to believe they are under a debt that not even the government would actually recognize.

[Olog-hai]

I wouldn’t dare do that.

The second worlders spare no expense to bring second and third world problems to the first world, though.

[Terry L Smith]

Minimum wage has always been something for those just starting out in the working world, or those that have changed their career.

It was not meant as a means to STAY at that level.

As one who hired and fired folks, and determined eligibility of those seeking to be hired as milvets, anybody that worked for more than three years, at the same place, at minimum wage, was seen as ‘not wanting to be going anywhere real soon’.

This dribble about ‘we have to raise the minimum wage to make it a living wage’, is just plain crap, and is really meant to drive businesses out of operation.

[PieterCasparzen]

Is this speaking of meager, hardscrabble workers in general or of people who are someone else’s literal possession?

Perhaps you mean "legal possession", as in slavery that counts a person as another person's property under the law.

Consider a situation in practical terms, not legal terms:

Not legally, but practically unable to escape a perpetual work situation.

There are sex slaves, for example, where there may or may not be some form of "ownership". The situation may simply be a young girl, say a 15-year-old from London, who was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery in a dangerous foreign country where she does not know the language, or anyone, does not know where she is or where anything is in the country. She may be under threat if she "escapes", but not be held in chains. She may be drugged up a bit. Technically she may not be a "slave" as Americans have been taught about slavery, that it is ONLY about Africans brought to America against their will prior to the Civil War who mostly worked in cotton fields, but there are many other types of arrangements where people are held in bondage.

You can have labor slaves in China that are not "slaves" in the technical sense, but who were lured to the big city from a dirt-poor rural area, and once they arrived and started working in a "job", found that they did not earn enough to cover their expenses, found themselves needing to live in a company dormitory next to the factory, and found themselves in a situation with no real exit other than to wander the streets and beg, prostitute themselves, etc. So they work in the factory, basically perpetually.

Cleverly the "employers" never called the workers slaves, but employees, so the employee is not entitled to food, clothing and shelter, but has to pay for them. They actually can be paid less than these things cost. How ? The company can simply "lend" them money to cover the "difference". Thus, instead of "getting ahead" by working, the "employee" is actually getting more and more in debt every day. Not saying I have any particular example of this, but just illustrating the math - it is possible to have employees who are hundreds or thousands of miles from family, off on their own, and ecnomically "stuck" - free to go at any time, but leaving being very distasteful - and such situations can actually cost the "employer" less than if they took on legal responsibility of having slaves and then providing them food, clothing and shelter at employer's cost. The employer can instead pay the "employee" less than what the employer's market cost of those things would be, and employees would simply have to fend for themselves.

These situations may not technically be slavery in the legality sense of the term, but for all practical purposes, the person is working and in bondage.

It's difficult for middle-class Americans, who can find a new job, quit their current job and then get a raise when starting the new job, to understand how lost and trapped some people in the world are.

In America, the whole concept of illegal alien workers in well-to-do towns is kept very quiet, as these are the people who mow the lawns, wash the dishes, etc. I have seen this firsthand in well-to-do New Jersey towns. You'll have apartments that look normal on the outside but that house a dozen or more illegals sleeping in tenant-constructed bunks, etc. I had a relationship to a restaurant that had a water leak in their ceiling caused by "plumbing" work (adding bathrooms) in the "apartment" above. Of course, these folks usually are in a situation where they CAN send money "home" every week, and they are treated usually decently, if not well, by their off-the-books employers. And they are typically free to go when they want, so they are definitely not "slaves". However... if they were slaves, it would actually cost the employers MORE, since a "slaveowner", if it were theoretically legal today in America, would pay for things like medical care and clothing for such slaves and today would probably have to pay more for housing than the slaves pay when they go 15 to an apartment. Slaves also get old - and their productivity slows down greatly, ending up basically nothing. Ergo, the slaveowner is essentially providing their slaves a retirement when they get old, at least 3 hots and a cot, clothes, and some kind of basic medical care. Under the "employee" plan - especially if the employee is an illegal alien and "off the books" - there are no retirement benefits and pay stops when work stops.

Food for thought...

[HiTech RedNeck]

One can speak of slaves in a figurative or literal sense. But to mix the two destroys the moral equivalence when dealing with the latter.

[EBH]

I couldn’t help but read this ...and while discussing “companies and debts” owed privately, consider the debts we as a government lay at the feet of our children TODAY.

Collateralized hereditary debt.

[Gaffer]

.... but I’m unclear what we’re supposed to do about that.

Yes, utter nonsense The writer and his ideological brothers want all these people to become legitimized citizens (Amnesty). If we had open borders, smuggling, etc. would not be necessary. He wants them to be paid a living wage (raise the minimum wage). He wants their lot in life to be raised to a decent minimum standards (by taxing you and me up the wahzoo).

It is pretty clear what he wants us to do, actually. Just more bleeding heart mushy liberalism.

[EBH]

Actually Terry, it was not meant to drive businesses out of operation. It was meant to keep the inefficient out of the competition for jobs.

Regarding Minimum Wage:

“It is much better to enact a minimum-wage law even if it deprives these unfortunates of work… better that the state should support the inefficient wholly and prevent the multiplication of the breed than subsidize incompetence and unthrift, enabling them to bring forth more of their kind.” - Royal Meeker, U.S. Commissioner of Labor, under Woodrow Wilson

Conservatives have a hard time wrapping their thoughts around progressive ideas regarding class. We tend to see each person as a human being capable of doing great things. Surely our history demonstrates thus. To the conservative business owner minimum wage is an obstacle to profits and skilled workers; but to the progressive business owner it is a means to shut out the inefficient. This is why the progressive business owner supports this concept of a ‘living wage.’ Paying a living wage means they can and will screen out those that can’t meet that minimum standard or replace them with technology. And then bemoan that we have a moral humanitarian requirement to support the inefficient wholly(and prevent the multiplication of the breed).

Go back and consider Meeker’s statement verses a conservatives view point on ‘working your way up.’ Democrats/progressives do not want the lower class to succeed vs. conservative who welcomes competition in an open market that rewards a man with the best skills.

[C. Edmund Wright]

With all due respect, you “food for thought” was all based on a false equivalency.

[Popman]

Slavery exists today in two virulent forms. The minimum wage and unionism.

You might want to look up the definition of slavery....the word "wage" in your post is a dead giveaway you need to look it up...

Abolish those two evils and profits will soar.

The vast majority of companies in this country pay their employees a wage far above minimum so it will hardly effect profits. Private sector unions are barely a beep on the screen today, those union jobs went all over seas where they could...the rest are dying a slow painful death :)

I would agree public sector unions are an evil that needs to be crushed

China will resume its rightful place as third world backwater

For the most part China is still a third world country except in their capitalist zones...China provides competition which in the long run is a good thing...