Government: ILAB Will Show Where Forced Labor Gold Goes

At a July 29 U.S. Chamber of Commerce panel on forced labor enforcement, Molly McCoy, associate deputy undersecretary for international labor affairs, or ILAB, said that a bureau report to be issued Sept. 5 will talk about specific supply chains, "so you can trace gold from specific mines in Africa, where there's child or forced labor, all the way to finished jewelry products and where they're being processed in the world."

McCoy later told the audience of human rights activists, business people and government officials that while she didn't want to say what input she is talking about, ILAB is much better able to figure out where that input is used than it was a year ago. "Traceability has improved dramatically," she said.

Still, McCoy emphasized, as others from the Labor Department and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative have, that unionized workforces are the best insurance against forced labor, more than traceability software or social audits.

"When people do not have any sort of job security, when they do not have any kind of backing, when they're existing in sort of tenuous jobs, when they're in danger, or they don't have any kind of voice, they will not report problems. They don’t feel safe doing it. And a quarterly audit, or a regular audit, especially if it's on a schedule and a supplier knows it's coming, is not going to unearth" forced labor or child labor, she said.

Responsible Business Alliance CEO Rob Lederer agreed that effective worker grievance tools matter, but said his group, which represents nine industries that have more than $9 trillion in sales and that contract with manufacturers in 120 countries, does believe in audits.

"We think it’s a necessary tool, but only a single tool," he said. "If you do audits in a vacuum, they're not effective."

Lederer said standards have been climbing. Where once, companies told suppliers that the labor recruiters they used could charge only "reasonable" fees to would-be workers, now his group says no fee can be charged. Migrant workers must be free to return to their home countries. Lederer said the RBA's work has resulted in more than $120 million in recruiting fees being returned to workers over the last few years.

Lederer said that, a few years ago, he had trouble convincing factory managers in Asia to care about worker standards but would argue "you should care because your customers care."

With the passage of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, and the new EU regulation banning the sale of goods made with forced labor, that's no longer a sales pitch he has to make: "I will say UFLPA, whether you agree with it or disagree with it, is a major game changer."

Lederer said he was just in Malaysia, talking about how CBP has enforced UFLPA. "You could have dropped a pin in the room [and heard it,] ... they understood for the first time that wherever they are in the world, that product is going to end up in the international marketplace," he said -- and therefore, "why they should care about a law in the United States or a law in Europe."

He added that "where there’s ambiguity in a legislation or rule or regulation, and they don’t understand ... what their obligations are, that’s when they become very problematic."

Although the momentum in the trade remedy law enforcement directorate is still on UFLPA, its leader Eric Choy said, CBP receives allegations of forced labor in countries around the world. He advised businesses to use ILAB's forced labor report when it's released in September, investigative media stories and nongovernmental organizations' reporting on sectors linked to forced labor.

"We are addressing the issue of forced labor globally," he said.