It’s your birthday, and you’re going out for hors d’oeuvres at the club followed by a celebration at your favorite restaurant. The club staff greets you warmly as always, and your seafood dinner at the restaurant is predictably excellent. You’ve visited these places many times before, own a stake in the club, and regularly take company clients to the restaurant. How did you not know that you and your company support slavery?

It may be a case of ignorance being bliss, according to experts. Alberto Pozzi, who manages Miami Shores Country Club, claimed he was unaware the 39 Filipino workers he employed through a staffing agency were slaves. The agency, Quality Staffing Services, charged immigrants fees for food, housing, and utilities that almost completely depleted their earnings and left them perpetually owing the initial $5,000 recruiting fee. Living conditions were awful, medical care was refused, and abuse was common. Workers’ visas were withheld, so they couldn’t leave. Yet, Pozzi said, “These people never had a word or outward indication that they were unhappy.”

Consumers are equally unaware of the slaves who bring P.F. Chang’s signature calamari to the table. New Zealand fishermen with United Fisheries may complain of the indignities they suffer because of their enslavement through a staffing agency—no net pay, squalid conditions, debt, 16-hour workdays, lack of safety equipment—but no one hears them half a world away, where much of the company’s revenue is generated.

Questions 

1. What are two ways in which modern-day workers become slaves? Who do you hold ethically accountable for their indentured servitude? 

2. How might an employer seek to determine whether the individuals hired through agencies are in indentured servitude? 

3. Once someone becomes an indentured worker, why might he or she stay?