Smoke, fire, and exploitation: how climate change fuels modern slavery

Data shows year by year the planet is getting hotter and hotter. Alongside the uptick in temperatures is the steady increase of labor exploitation as corporations put profits over protections and force workers into ever more dangerous conditions. Denise Brennan, Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Faculty Co-Director of the Gender+ Justice Initiative at Georgetown University, believes that a new template for anti-trafficking efforts is needed. One that combines worker safety with mandated reductions in fossil fuel use. By taking steps to stop rising temperatures, we can also stop also the increase and normalization of labor exploitation.  

Treating workers as “expendable assets” 

From agriculture to construction to food service, extreme heat and other climate change caused harms are changing the face of human trafficking. As part of her research, Brennan recently spoke with laborers working on the front lines of climate change. She particularly focused on places with recent flooding or fires. What workers told her was that, while the jobs being done were essential to sustaining life, they were being treated as easily replaced.  

For Open Democracy, Brennan writes: 

This new era needs more than just new kinds of labor protections. Entire sectors of the economy need to be restructured before they become even more lethal. Treating workers as expendable assets is as grotesque as it is economic folly.

Workers have been found doing their jobs in the midst of a haze of toxic wildfire smoke, in active evacuation zones, and knee deep in contaminated flood waters. According to Brennan, the extreme criminalization of irregular migration has created a pool of workers with few job opportunities. Basically left with only dangerous, dirty, and dehumanizing work options, many have little choice but to accept. And sadly, their corporate employers know it. 

Forced to pick when “smoke and fire were everywhere”  

Workers told Brennan their employers put substantial pressure on them to keep working. Even in the midst of life threatening conditions, like toxic wildfire smoke and evacuation zones. Markedly, most work without any provision of appropriate face covering or protection. Many undocumented workers said they had to accept the dangerous conditions. That was due in large part to a fear of being reported to Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE).   

Brennan shared: 

…vans (were) sent to pick up workers who had evacuated to shelters…growers didn’t always explicitly tell them they must work, but when the vans showed up, they felt they couldn’t say no…it wasn’t really a choice  

Additionally, during disasters, the few protections low-wage workers do have are usually suspended. Brennan points to recent examples in CA. In mandatory evacuation zones while fires still raged, local officials issued “access passes” to agricultural workers “allowing” them to continue working. Meanwhile, workers have to sign liability waivers. Waivers that protect growers as workers risk heat exhaustion, exposure to toxins, and the terror of encroaching fire and emergency evacuation. Workers also spoke of their fear of using emergency shelters for fear of ICE raids and roundups. Instead, they were forced to sleep rough on beaches and the streets.  

A “tipping point” in the struggle for worker justice  

Given the new era of extreme weather, Brennan asks what will count as severe enough to warrant prevention, protection and prosecution going forward? Significantly, the fear is that society will simply resign itself to a dystopia where ‘ever worse’ becomes the norm. Brennan counters that instead, we need to undertake large-scale restructuring that will ensure labor exploitation isn’t normalized. And that decent working conditions for workers everywhere are protected. 

According to Brennan,

“We are at a tipping point in the struggle for worker justice. If we don’t begin to prioritize people over profits, even more workers will perish alongside the planet. 

 Freedom United stands with Brennan in resisting the normalization of exploitation and now is the time to act. Help us hold private and public sectors accountable for failing to prevent modern slavery happening in plain sight. Sign our petition in support of strong, mandatory human rights due diligence legislation in the US, UK, and EU and help address labor exploitation around the world.