Legal Efforts to Combat Human Trafficking

The Southern Poverty Law Center last week  filed five more lawsuits against Signal International LLC, accusing the shipbuilder and its network of recruiters and labor brokers of trafficking 500 Indian guest workers to the United States and forcing them to work under barbaric conditions.The new lawsuits filed on behalf of 60 workers are part of a pro bono effort by some of the nation’s most prestigious law firms to prosecute multiple human trafficking lawsuits against Signal. In addition to the lawsuits filed today, three law firms filed lawsuits on behalf of 83 guest workers in May.

A panel at the American Bar Association annual meeting in San Francisco also focused on efforts to combat human trafficking.  Efforts to thwart human trafficking in workers has increased significantly in recent years, and the pace will quicken as employment rights intersect with human rights as an enforcement tool, shining a spotlight on employers.“This is not just a [Justice Department] problem, not just a criminal problem,” Robert Canino, a Dallas attorney for the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, told the audience Sunday morning at an ABA Annual Meeting program. Canino and others figured out that discriminatory practices against groups of workers imported into the United States could be cast differently for civil enforcement. For example, Canino said, sex workers who basically are enslaved are experiencing a form of sexual harassment, albeit extreme.The program, titled “The Real Cost of Human Trafficking: How Can Employers and Worker Advocates Prevent Labor Trafficking and Protect Trafficking Victims,” was sponsored by the ABA’s Section of Labor and Employment Law.

KJ