Many of today's products in America are produced in sweatshops that use poor labor practices and in many cases contribute to Human Trafficking. For example, a few years ago a sweatshop in Daewoosa, a company in American Samoa, was found guilty of many horrific offenses including: women held as indentured servants, human trafficking, sexual harassment (factory bosses watched the women shower and dress), brutality (they show a picture of a pile of clothes that had to be trashed because they were stained with workers' blood), failure to pay wages, and the list goes on. This sweatshop supplied clothing for J.C. Penny, Kohl's, Target, Walmart, Sears, and more. Vietnamese workers were 'recruited' by a Korean owned company to work in Somoa, an American territory, so the clothes could be labeled "Made in the USA." You can read more details and see some very sad pictures at these sites from CorpWatch and the National Labor Commission.
Here are some facts regarding Human Trafficking and forced labor:
"According to the United Nations Working Group on Contemporary Forms of Slavery, an estimated 20 million people were held in bonded slavery as of 1999.
• In 2004 there are more slaves than were seized from Africa during four centuries of trans-Atlantic slave trade. (Kevin Bales, Disposable People)
• In 1850 a slave in the Southern United States cost the equivalent of $40,000 today. According to Free the Slaves, a slave today costs an average of $90.
• Approximately two-thirds of today’s slaves are in South Asia. Human Rights Watch estimates that in India alone there are as many as 15 million children in bonded slavery."- International Justice Mission Fact Sheet
