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What Next - The New Era of Child Labor

Slate Daily Feed

Slate

Business, News, Society & Culture

3.91.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 August 2022

⏱️ 21 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With an ongoing labor shortage, companies turn to third-party labor brokers to fill jobs. But with little oversight and a surge of immigrants, the line between “ recruiter” and “ trafficker” gets blurred as vulnerable children are sent to work in dangerous conditions. 


Guest: Mica Rosenberg, national immigration reporter for Reuters.


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Transcript

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1:06.4

Reuters reporter Michael Rosenberg recently uncovered this letter. It was a little strange.

1:12.1

It came from an automobile plant in Alabama. And it was addressed to US consular officials in Mexico.

1:18.7

What did the letter say? Well, the letter said that they were very desperate for workers.

1:26.5

They said that there had been a shortage of workers in Alabama because of COVID and other,

1:34.3

you know, related economic disruptions. Yeah, it sounds familiar. I feel like a lot of industries

1:39.6

are facing a worker shortage right now. Exactly. And they said specifically that they were under

1:45.1

huge pressure from Hyundai to keep up manufacturing and that there was basically a sort of zero

1:51.6

tolerance for slowdowns on the production line. And so, you know, in their own words, they said

1:57.8

that they weren't able to find workers locally. And so because of that, they needed to recruit

2:02.7

these workers from Mexico. This letter caught Mike as attention because she'd been investigating

2:09.1

real problems at this Alabama plant, which specializes in metal stamping. She had documented

...

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