If we are to reach an understanding of the problem, it is important to make sure we are all talking about the same thing.

We recognize that slavery involves forcing a person to provide labor or services, dictated by and benefiting an "employer", using coercive tactics that include threats, abuse, restraints, blackmail and/or fraud.  Slaves are treated as commodities, bought and sold, and physically deprived of their freedom of movement.  Modern day slavery is perhaps most often referred to as “human trafficking” or “trafficking in persons”. 

The United States government enacted legislation to deal with modern day slavery.  According to the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, severe forms of trafficking in persons always include the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision or obtaining a person for one the following three purposes:

1.  Labor or services obtained through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, AND resulting in involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage or slavery, OR

2.  Commercial sex act obtained through the use of force, fraud, or coercion, OR

3.  If the person is under the age of 18, any commercial sex act whether or not the use of force, fraud, or coercion is involved.

Trafficking is not to be confused with smuggling.  According to the Human Smuggling & Trafficking Center, human smuggling is the facilitation, transportation, attempted transportation or illegal entry of a person(s) across an international border, in violation of one or more countries laws, either clandestinely or through deception, such as the use of fraudulent documents.  Two things to remember

»        Financial or other material benefit for the smuggler is not necessary element of smuggling.

»        Smuggling is between willing parties; the person(s) smuggled gives their consent and is generally left to their own devices at the final destination.

Trafficking victims may or may not be taken across an international border and do not give their consent.  It is possible for a person to consent to being smuggled and end up being trafficked.

Another term often associated with trafficking in persons is sweatshops.  The Department of Labor defines a work place as a sweatshop if it violates two or more of the most basic labor laws including child labor, minimum wage, overtime and fire safety laws.  They indicate that over 50% of U.S. garment factories are sweatshops.  Sweatshop is generally a pejorative term used to describe a manufacturing facility where working conditions are poor and workers are paid little.

Deplorable working conditions do not always equate to trafficking in persons.  Sweatshops are involved in trafficking in persons, however, when they trick the workers into starting work without informed consent or keep them there through debt bondage or psychological coercion.

To think justly, we must understand what others mean; to know the value of our thoughts, we must try their effects on other minds.

William Hazlitt