One of the ways in which traffickers use and exploit their victims is through forced labour.
Forced labour involves victims being compelled to work very long hours, often in hard conditions, and to hand over all, or the majority, of their wages to their traffickers. Forced labour implies the use of coercion and a lack of freedom or choice for the victim. Victims may also be subjected to verbal threats or violence to achieve compliance.
example Manufacturing, entertainment, travel, farming, and construction industries have been found to use the forced labour of victims of human trafficking to some extent. Often large numbers of people are housed in single dwellings and there is evidence of ‘hot bunking’, where a returning shift takes up the sleeping places of those starting the next shift.
Signs that can indicate forced labour are:
- threats or actual physical harm
- restriction of movement and confinement to the workplace or to a limited area
- prohibiting the victim to leave the job until some kind of real or fake debt is paid off
- the withholding of wages or excessive wage reductions that violate previously made agreements
- retention of passports and identity documents (the workers can neither leave nor prove their identity status)
- threat of denunciation to the authorities where the worker is of illegal status (for example, they entered the country irregularly)