Labor Issues

Human trafficking is not a static phenomenon. Traffickers are consistently finding new and more efficient methods to exploit vulnerable populations across the globe. Even activists who have devoted their lives to understanding and fighting the practice of modern-day slavery can sometimes be surprised by the nature of this beast of a problem. Ask Annalisa Enrile, a professor with the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck’s online MSW program who leads the school’s Philippines immersion program.

Sam Oliver, a union shop steward at the Sime Darby Rubber and Oil plantation in Liberia, where workers live in company-provided housing, says “people lived in deplorable” conditions before joining the General Agriculture and Allied Workers Union of Liberia (GAAWUL).

Today, says Oliver, a warehouse clerk on the plantation, “through the intervention of this union, you can now see they are renovating some of these houses and negotiation is on the table so they can fast track the renovation.”

An astounding 80,000 Zimbabwe workers in formal employment—out of some 350,000 workers—did not receive wages and benefits on time in 2014, according to a new Solidarity Center report, “Working Without Pay: Wage Theft in Zimbabwe,” released in Harare.

Nhlanhla Mabizela says he first truly grasped the meaning of gender inequality on a winter day in the dusty streets of Alexandra Township in post-apartheid South Africa.

Cutting through an alley surrounded by houses made of iron scrap and plastic sheets, Mabizela and a friend came across a group of children playing. All were barefoot in the cold, with a single layer of clothes he assumed were the only ones they owned.