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Cracking Down on Slavery in the Global Supply Chain

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Good for President Obama (and even congressional Republicans!) for passing and singing a bill that closes the 1930 Tariff Act loophole that allowed for slave-produced goods to enter the United States if it was determined that Americans could not acquire those goods in other ways. This was a massive opportunity for companies to use slave labor in their supply chains, one that has been used frequently. That’s especially true in the seafood industry, a topic I have spent a lot of time highlighting here.

President Obama will sign legislation this week that effectively bans American imports of fish caught by forced labor in Southeast Asia, part of a flurry of recent actions by the White House, federal agencies, international trade unions and foreign governments to address lawlessness at sea and to better protect offshore workers and the marine environment.

Last week, the president signed the Port State Measures Agreement, which empowers officials to prohibit foreign vessels suspected of illegal fishing from receiving port services and access. The United States became the 20th country to ratify the pact.

In another step, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a plan this month to improve how seafood is tracked from catch to market, imposing new reporting requirements on American importers. Two of the world’s largest trade unions filed a complaint last week with the United Nations’ labor agency about seafood from Thailand produced by so-called sea slaves, and the Thai government said it was installing satellite tracking devices on more fishing ships and requiring more reporting as workers get on or off the vessels.

“Step by step, I do really think we’re making progress, and there is a growing awareness of how much we need to get more control over the world’s oceans and the range of crime that happens out there,” Secretary of State John Kerry said in an interview on Monday. He added that he hoped to build on the momentum in the fall during a global meeting, called Our Oceans, that he will host in Washington.

The amendment that the president has said he will sign this week would close a loophole in the Tariff Act of 1930, which bars products made by convict, forced or indentured labor. For 85 years, the law has exempted goods derived from slavery if American domestic production could not meet demand.

Moreover, American unions are showing the sort of necessary international labor solidarity to improve worldwide labor conditions that I frequently call for:

On Friday, two of the largest labor unions, the International Transport Workers’ Federation and International Trade Union Confederation, filed a complaint at the International Labor Organization, which is part of the United Nations, about the use of forced labor to produce Thai seafood.

“The Thai government has shown a willingness to react, but there are still big gaps in their laws, and even more so in how they enforce them,” said Steve Cotton, the general secretary of the transport union, which represents 4.7 million rail, trucking and maritime workers worldwide.

Mr. Cotton said the next step would be for the United Nations labor organization to send a team to investigate the allegations. The complaint carries more weight because it was sponsored by the trade union confederation, which includes the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and is the world’s largest union, representing 176 million workers.

Pisan Manawapat, the Thai ambassador to the United States, said his government was working hard to address the problems highlighted by The Times, other news organizations and human rights groups. He said his country had made dozens of arrests of trafficking suspects and had installed satellite tracking devices in the last two months on more than 5,300 fishing ships for better monitoring of fish and workers.

This is all very important and incredibly important if we want to see labor conditions improve worldwide. It also demonstrates that in fact the United States has a lot of power to choose the conditions by which it will allow production for imported products. We could expand on this significantly by banning other exploitative conditions of labor, creating a global race to the top if companies want to access the lucrative American market. We have a ton of power here. We just have to use it. That’s of course the problem.

And let’s not underestimate the centrality of slavery in the global economy. See, for example, Brazil:

Brazil’s ministry of labor has fined 340 Brazilian companies for using slave labor, including forced labor and people working in degrading conditions for little or no pay in rural and urban areas, a leading anti-slavery group has said.

A “dirty list” published by the rights group Reporter Brazil this month revealed that 340 Brazilian companies from May 2013 to May 2015 employed people working in slave-like conditions, including in sweatshops producing clothes, in farms, cattle ranches, timber companies, construction and charcoal production.

Leonardo Sakamoto, head of Sao Paulo-based Reporter Brazil, said his organization, which works to expose slave labor, used the Freedom of Information Act to uncover the names of companies and individuals that were found to have slave labor by federal labor inspectors in Brazil.

“The companies were fined by the labor ministry and those enslaved were released,” he said.

And while it’s unclear from the story to what extent these goods were being traded internationally or exported to the United States or other wealthy world nations, the point is that they certainly could be unless Brazil chooses to actually enforce its laws on slavery. It did in this case and that’s good. But without legal and financial consequences for companies using slave labor in their supply chains–or looking the other way by not asking questions–there’s not much incentive to not use slaves. The closure of the 1930 loophole makes that a little harder.

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