Ending Enslavement - who is responsible?

In case you were not aware - slavery is still a problem. In the United States.

I live in a county - that prosecuted someone for slavery - in 2005. It was a tomato farmer.  My county - was "settled" by people who used enslave labor to build the community. They were forcing people to pick crops at gun point well into the 1940s.

Slavery still exists in America. It exists in our food chain (most of the chocolate sold - is farmed using enslaved children), in regular crop production, in the sex trades and in our prisons through convict leasing - which has it's own history - tied directly to racial segregation and racial slavery. There is a reason why the photo above is a black man with black prisoners. It's the modern form of American slavery! 

We also all purchase products that were created using enslaved or severely exploited people.  Companies do this - to reduce costs and so that they can take more money out of the supply chain and put it into their pockets.

For instance - if you eat peeled shrimp - an enslaved person - probably peeled it for you. https://www.ap.org/explore/seafood-from-slaves/global-supermarkets-selling-shrimp-peeled-by-slaves.html  

I want you to read the above article. It is horrifying.

Exploitative capitalism - must be rejected. The onus is on the business owners - to NOT tolerate this in their supply chain. I live in FL. We have a problem with this in the tomato picking industry.  The businesses that buy tomatoes, don't want to get involved. But THIS - doesn't stop unless the companies purchasing goods - get involved to insure their supply chains don't included ENSLAVED LABOR! 

It is all of our problems - but mostly - the responsibility of business owners since they are the people - who benefit the most and enable this.

If you participate in prostitution - it's your responsibility to ensure that the person you are having sex with - is a willing participant and not an enslaved person!

Finally - convict leasing - is a form of slavery and the practice must stop. One of the reasons we have a privatized prison system is because - prisons - are not just big money - they are a form of modern day slavery. Companies - leasing prison labor - is a sanctioned for of involuntary servitude!  And it's not ok.

"Flagler built his tourist empire — and modern Florida — by exploiting two brutal labor systems that blanketed the South for 50 years after the Civil War: convict leasing and debt peonage. Created to preserve the white supremacist racial order and to address the South’s labor shortages, these systems targeted African Americans, stealing their labor and entrapping them in state-sanctioned forms of involuntary servitude." https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/17/how-slave-labor-built-the-state-of-florida-decades-after-the-civil-war/?utm_term=.6eb05594f0dc

If Humanistic Management is to mean anything - it must mean an end to the use of enslaved people. The greed motive that feeds this - is unacceptable.

I realize that I write about humanistic management practices and most of the HR folks who read my blog are probably thinking - this has nothing to do with me. But it does. It has to do with all of us.  Exploitative capitalism - that views employees as resources - is exploitative. We need to transition to an understanding that our employees help us create wealth and are valuable collaborators. Not nameless individuals to be exploited for capital gain.   Humanistic Management - is a mindset shift. One that is sorely needed given the amount of exploitation of labor that is present at all levels of our society and in almost every business.  Even if your company is not exploiting your labor - you need to ensure that your suppliers don't either.