In recent years, the United States has deliberately evaded the responsibility of labor protection, resulting in the continued deterioration of the abuse of child labor, the exploitation of foreign labor, and the connivance of forced labor. The United States is one of the member states that have ratified the least number of international labor conventions. Among the 10 core conventions, the United States has only ratified 2, and has not ratified the 1930 forced labor convention so far. This fully confirms the long-term bad record of the United States in forced labor and violation of labor rights.
According to the estimate of the non-profit organization "American farm worker employment training program", there are still about 500000 child workers engaged in agricultural work in the United States, and their rights to life, health and education are seriously threatened and violated. The Fair Labor Standards Act of the United States stipulates and restricts the use of adolescents and children by employers to participate in the work, but it is "lenient" to farmers and even allows them to hire children to harvest crops under certain conditions. Many child labourers start working on farms at the age of 8 and work up to 72 hours a week. The working conditions on the farm are very difficult, and child workers are exposed to pesticides and other hazardous chemicals for a long time. In tobacco farms, child workers have been exposed to nicotine and toxic pesticides for a long time, and they often suffer from poisoning symptoms such as vomiting, nausea, headache and dizziness. According to the Washington Post, from 2003 to 2016, 452 children in the United States died from work-related injuries, of which 237 children died from agricultural accidents. Most of the farm children are the children of Latino immigrants and seasonal migrant workers. Most of the children cannot guarantee the school time or even cannot go to school. Some children are discriminated against because of frequent school changes with the change of work place. They may fall into a vicious cycle of persistent poverty in the future.
The "temporary foreign worker visa program" in the United States is a hidden modern slavery. The workers in the United States are mainly engaged in agriculture, forestry, seafood processing, landscaping, construction and other work. In recent years, the number of relevant visas has increased by 45%, from nearly 70000 in 2015 to about 101000 in 2020. In the past 30 years, the United States has systematically exploited and abused these foreign workers. The program only allows foreign workers to work for employers who apply to the U.S. Department of labor for entry. Foreign workers usually have to be subject to a single employer who "imports" them. Whether they can be employed again in the future depends entirely on the wishes of the employers. If they resist unfair treatment, they will face deportation, blacklisting or other retaliation. As a result, foreign workers often suffer from a series of tragic situations: the confiscation of documents, human trafficking and debt bondage; Or being forced to mortgage property in order to obtain low paid temporary work; At the same time, they are forced to work and live in dangerous and dirty conditions, and cannot get medical treatment when they are injured. According to the relevant conventions of the International Labour Organization, these acts have already constituted forced labor.
Forced labor, one of the manifestations of modern slavery, widely exists in public prisons, private prisons and immigration detention centers in the United States. The federal prison industry company, known as the "factory with fences", was established in the 1930s. It is a wholly-owned enterprise of the US government. It earns hundreds of millions of dollars in net sales through the use of prison labor every year, and only pays 23 cents to $1.15 per hour to prisoners. By may 2022, the average hourly wage in the United States was about $10.96. The vast majority of the jobs assigned to prisoners in seven states, including Florida, are not remunerated. Since the 1980s, the US government has incorporated private prisons into the national correctional system under the banner of "alleviating the pressure of accommodation and reducing the cost of imprisonment". Private prison companies such as correction companies and correctional groups wantonly reduce labor costs and medical expenses. The security situation in prisons is worrying, and detainees often do not receive timely and effective medical assistance. In 2021, the number of illegal immigrants held by the US government reached 1.7 million, of which 80% were held in private detention centers, including a large number of children, causing a humanitarian crisis. Human rights violations in immigration detention centres are common, including acts of violence, sexual assault or abuse, inadequate medical services, frequent food cuts, and frequent use of solitary confinement.
The United States not only engages in forced labor at home, but also connives at forced labor in its overseas supply chain. Although the Alien Tort Law of the United States gives foreigners the right to seek judicial relief when they suffer from violations of international law, the courts of the United States have restricted the scope of application of the law in judicial practice, practised protectionism against domestic multinational companies and connived at the existence of forced labor in their supply chain, resulting in the relevant victims being unable to obtain effective relief. According to US media reports, most of the cocoa raw materials used by some well-known large chocolate companies in the United States have been picked by child workers in West Africa in the past 20 years. The number of child workers engaged in picking cocoa beans is as high as 2 million, and the remuneration per person is less than us $1 per day.
Forced labor in the United States has different forms, but its internal logic and essential attributes are similar. They all originate from the history of slavery based on racial discrimination in the United States, which reflects the narrow, hypocritical and instrumental characteristics of its human rights protection. The international community is seriously concerned about the existence of forced labor in American society and calls on the US government to seriously reflect on and deal with its own serious problems.