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Navigate the site: 1. INTRO … 2. Learn …   3. Plan … 4. REFLECT    

Learn

Summary:

When people think of human trafficking, they usually think of sex trafficking because of movies like Taken. But an equally wide-spread category of human trafficking is forced labor or labor trafficking, which is what this site is about. Labor trafficking can happen in the United States or in poor countries. It can happen on farms or in cities. It can involve children or grown men or women. The most important point to know is that we can come in contact with it every day, perhaps in the conflict minerals in our technology, the clothes we wear, the chocolate candy we give out on Halloween, or the fruit and vegetables we eat in our salad. Examples of modern slavery are all around us. Once we recognize it, we have a responsibility to teach others, to advocate for change, and to bring about change through THE POWER OF YOUR PURCHASE.

3 areas in the simulation focus on (1) tech, (2) chocolate, and (3) clothes:

1. Technology and Conflict Minerals.

One group learns about technology and conflict minerals (3 students). 

One group learns about Conflict Minerals. Conflict minerals are minute substances – tungsten, tin, tantalum, and gold –  that make our smart phones and computers work. Mining and sale of conflict minerals in the area around the Democratic Republic of Congo yield money to war lords for weapons purchases. Well-know companies like Apple, Intel, Samsung, in fact, all our technology companies depend on these minerals. Because the final products we hold in our hands come at the end of a long supply chain, companies and consumers have been able to claim ignorance of the bloody source of the minerals. But it is possible for companies to improve their supply chains – Apple is a great example – by having independent firms certify how the minerals are sourced.

Learn about slave labor, tech companies, and mining: how conflict minerals end up in our technology. Essential viewing: Blood in the Mobile is a Danish documentary that shows an investigative journalist tracing the origins of minerals in his mobile phone. In one hour and 20 minutes, viewers will get excellent understanding of the problem and see how children work in these mines under inhuman conditions.

Understand Supply Chains. Supply chains are the multi-step process by which components of our purchases come together from a variety of often-independent companies. Imagine the supply chain of components in a smart phone:

Corrupt mine owners, working with corrupt officials and slave dealers, own a mine and lure slaves –> Slaves mine minerals –> Mine owners sell minerals to middlemen and transporters, who in turn sell minerals to –> trading houses and exporters where the minerals move internationally to –> smelters and processors where raw materials become industrial-grade materials so they can be sold to –> circuit board producers where the heart of tech is put together, then on to –> assembly companies like Foxconn, which makes iPhones for –> Apple –> who sells to us.

Learn about efforts to clean up supply chains. The Dodd-Frank Act is a provision in a law that requires companies to disclose their use of conflict minerals. Passed in 2010, companies have been slow to set up the difficult means to meet the law. Under the Trump Administration, efforts have started to suspend the provision or its enforcement. A variety of efforts have been made to pressure companies and government to improve their supply chains. The Sentry is among the best known.

Here’s how Cabrini students and Ambassadors portrayed forced labor in technology. Maria Lattanze insisted on getting down and dirty to portray a child laborer in a mine. Large rocks in the dirt made the sound of digging for minerals echo through the gym.

Tin, tantalum, tungsten, and gold are in all our technology. Often children, because of their small size, are sent down in the mines to dig. How can we tell if slavery is in the supply chain?

The picture below here is of Juliet explaining the supply chain process and efforts to remove slavery from mining.

Which technology companies monitor their supply chains to reduce forced labor and modern slavery?
2. Chocolate
SECOND GROUP LEARNS ABOUT HOW CHOCOLATE IS GROWN AND PRODUCED.

Another group learned about how chocolate is grown using slave labor in the Ivory Coast. Essential viewing: The Dark Side of Chocolate is a 46-min. video that will graphically show you how child labor is in the delicious taste of chocolate. Similar in style to the Blood in the Mobile documentary, you go with the reporter to track down the use of child labor. You can get more information in this article, Child Labor and Slavery in the Chocolate Industry.

Chocolate companies have been slower to respond to consumer pressure to source cocoa from sources that don’t use child and other forms of forced labor. The Washington Post did an excellent, in-depth report on companies like Hershey’s that have failed to live up to their promises. Cocoa’s child laborers: Mars, Nestlé and Hershey pledged nearly two decades ago to stop using cocoa harvested by children. Yet much of the chocolate you buy still starts with child labor.

Here’s how Cabrini students and CRS Ambassadors portrayed forced labor in the chocolate industry.

Slave holders, played here by Evans Baker, lure children to cocoa plantations where the key ingredient of our candy grows.
Is your chocolate picked by child slaves the way Derricka Harvey picks winterberries here?
3. Another group learns about clothes (3 students).

A third group learned about how our clothes are made. Do you remember seeing pictures of the clothes factory in Bangladesh that collapsed and killed many of its workers? That picture gives a sense of what the conditions are like for workers in the clothing industry in Southeast Asia.

Dhaka Savar Building Collapse
“Dhaka Savar Building Collapse” (CC BY-SA 2.0) by rijans
How much of our clothes have labels like Made in Bangladesh? Can you be sure your fashion is slave-free?
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