OTTAWA — Human rights lawyers are calling on Ottawa to ban American imports that stem from forced labour linked to automotive firms using prisoner work in Alabama, under the same law meant to block products made through exploitative practices in China.
“Forced or coercive labour can exist anywhere when people lack real choice protection or power,” said Sandra Wisner, director of the International Human Rights Program at the University of Toronto.
“Discussions about forced labour tend to focus on global supply chains in the Global South, so in factories in Southeast Asia or agricultural fields in Latin America. But the use of forced or prison labour in the U.S., including under deeply coercive and abusive conditions, receives far less attention, especially here in Canada.”
I don’t always post about ChinaAmerica, but when I do, it’s when there’s no double standard. :D
… are workers in the US slaves too?
Yes. US workers are in fact slaves that get to choose their manager (to some degree) but never their owners.
Just try buying a random property in the woods and not hooking up to utilities or otherwise not participating in the economy. You’ll have to start shooting federal agents by your first winter.
I love how you change basic rules on sanitation and what not to “The government will murder us for not participating in the economyyyyy!!”
If it were about ‘basic rules of sanitation,’ then there wouldn’t be regulations against installing your own electric and water when entirely off grid.
Regulations should not be: 'You need to hook into this sewer line, and also you need to build your house exactly like this in order to qualify to hook into the sewer line. You decide against stick framing? Congrats we won’t approve your building which would be safe otherwise because our local code enforcement isn’t actually an engineer and can’t read architect and engineer approved blueprints because they look different than the corpo slop that has been rubber stamp approved for the last decade. Just want your own septic and not hook into sewer at all? Fuck you. Hire our state-approved service to do it (and pay 30,000% more than it costs to do the job) or you won’t get approved. Want to do anything interesting or long lasting? Fuck you. The state-approved builders we’re going to make you use can’t do that. ’
Those rules are to perpetuate capitalism (and because nepotism flourishes at low levels of government.) Not to promote safety or sanitation, especially in the middle of nowhere. Most Regulations should be applied on sale or transfer. Not during building or living on the property. Because for 99.999999999999% of human history in pretty much every place that’s how that’s worked. You bring it up to standard when selling or transferring, because who cares if YOU die, it’s only a problem when it starts to affect others.