Forced Labor in China

A couple weeks ago, we had numerous class discussions about modern forms of slavery. We listened to a very intense poem called "Shirt" by Robert Pinsky, and we were then assigned to write a poem or story about modern day slavery in a certain country or factory. Before the assignment, I had never thought much of forced labor, and how big of a role it plays in the American society. A shockingly high 98% of the clothes in America have been imported from other countries, according to ABCNews.  But the problem isn't that we import too much, it's that what we import is made by slave labor in other countries.

Recently, I found a story that details the life of a slave in a factory in Masanjia, China. The story was discovered when a woman and her husband opened a box of Halloween decorations to decorate their house. But when they opened the box, they found more than just the decorations, they found this:



In the letter, a woman from the Masanji Forced Labor camp in China begs whoever opens the item to alert the World Human Rights Assocation about the cruel violations that occur daily. She works fifteen hours a day, gets zero days off. If a worker tries to get a day off, they "will suffer torturement, beat and rude remark". And they only make $1.61 a month.

Yes, the details are horrid, and yes, we should all go out of our way to make sure we stop things like this from happening. But a larger impact would be the impact that items made by slave labor would have on the US companies that sell them. According to Title 19 Section 1307 of the US Code, any item made in a country by forced labor is not legally allowed to come in the US. If these laws were truly followed by the US, I would be interested to see how much of the products and goods we buy are made by forced slave labor.

After all of this, I have been left questioning: Are products made by slaves a part of the American society? Is there anything that we can do to ensure that we don't buy or support slave labor? I think that the Americans rely too much on cheap, slave-made goods in order to make a profit, and that most care more about money than suffering people in other countries. What do you think?