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Forced Labor in the Globalized World

Moderator: Tom Ashbrook
Terry Collingsworth Regina Abrami Roger Plant Thomas Kochan: May 14, 2005; Running Time: 1:00:54

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

Before buying your next chocolate bar or sweatshirt, bear in mind its potential hidden cost: the forced labor of an impoverished worker. According to a recent International Labor Organization report, 12.3 million people from developing countries toil miserably to produce goods and services for industrialized nations. One after another, speakers on this panel reveal the astonishing pervasiveness of modern-day slavery, on which, it seems, the entire global economy now depends. Roger Plant makes clear that this is not a matter of low wages. “It’s when you enter a job or service against your freedom of will or choice and can’t get out without some penalty. Deception is a key aspect of forced labor.” Says Terry Collingsworth, “The brand names of the global economy are benefiting from forced labor. …You see children and young adults forced to work for them. I observed Walmart suppliers in China, where workers were told they’d get a job at a certain rate, who then found out they were in debt and couldn’t leave.” But it’s not just that developed countries and their corporations exploit these workers. Thomas Kochan says, “We’ve focused on globalization as products going across borders, and now we have people going across, and countries depending on those people to provide remittances back to families as a source of currency and income.” In recent times, Nike and Gap have begun to make their suppliers in developing nations adhere to codes of conduct, and activism in the West is making an impact. Regina Abrami says “Boardrooms are feeling the heat….But there’s fear that if someone does well, he will become less competitive. …If you don’t introduce government regulation that solves the problem of fair competition, you won’t solve the issue of corporations acting in less than virtuous ways.”

Lecture Details

Location: Kresge Auditorium

About the Speakers

Moderator: Tom Ashbrook

Host, On Point, WBUR-FM, Boston

Tom Ashbrook was raised on an Illinois farm, attended Yale University and worked as a surveyor and dynamiter in Alaska's oil fields before turning foreign correspondent. He spent 10 years in Asia, based in India, Hong Kong and Tokyo. At the Boston Globe, he directed coverage of the end of the Cold War and of the Gulf War, serving as deputy managing editor until 1996. He was awarded the Livingston Prize for National Reporting and named a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University before taking a four-year plunge into Internet entrepreneurship, chronicled in his book The Leap. Ashbrook was enlisted to host emergency coverage of the 9/11 attacks for National Public Radio.

Terry Collingsworth

Executive Director, International Labor Rights Fund

Regina Abrami

Assistant Professor, Business, Government and the International Economy, Harvard Business School Faculty Associate, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University

Roger Plant

Head of the Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labor
International Labor Organization

Thomas Kochan

George M. Bunker Professor of Management,
Co-director, Institute for Work and Employment, MIT Sloan School of Management
Professor of Engineering Systems

From 1988 to 1991 Thomas Kochan served as Head of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences Area in the Sloan School. He came to MIT from Cornell University where he was on the faculty of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations from 1973 to 1980. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from the University of Wisconsin. Since then he has served as a third-party mediator, fact finder, and arbitrator and as a consultant to a variety of government and private sector organizations and labor-management groups. He was a consultant for one year to the Secretary of Labor in the Department of Labor’s Office of Policy Evaluation and Research.