Tufts alumna Marlen Bodden (LA '83) is a lawyer in New York City working in the field of human trafficking and slavery. The Daily sat down with Bodden to discuss her growing discipline.
Marlen Bodden: One of the issues that I work on has to do with forced labor and modern day slavery. I have clients who come to me seeking their back wages from their former employers … Because of how our global economy has developed, we now have a huge demand for slave labor … And, as in the transatlantic slave trade, the employer can actually order a certain number of slaves: "I need more workers. Bring them to me." And then how the employer keeps the person, the worker, there is through wage manipulation. They devalue the work — that is, they underpay them …
Mick Krever: So … that person who's indebted to the person who has brought them over — how do they come to you? At what point do they make an escape?
MB: Right. Good question. Often what happens is the person now becomes a little more sophisticated, and since they're not being held at gunpoint, they say, "You know what? I heard that there are laws. I heard that you're supposed to pay me minimum wage. I heard you're supposed to pay me overtime, etc. So do it. So pay me my wages."
So the employer says, "No, I'm not doing that." Normally, the worker is fired or the worker quits. Societies often blame the victims here … But those are not the people who should be prosecuted. The people who should be prosecuted are the ones who broke the law that says there is no slavery …
The clients come to me, and I gather evidence … How do I do it? You have to get really creative. I had this one client: She's from Guatemala, and she was a domestic servant … She just did so much work. And she was paid, at one point, something like $1.50 an hour to work seven days a week …
The employer is a very well-respected physician, and his wife said, "We don't even know who this woman is. What are you talking about?" My client had already given me a prescription, a bottle for a prescription, that the doctor had filled for her himself. Then there was also a picture of my client with the family before she served dinner, some holiday dinner. I called the lawyer. I said, "Listen, I got your answer and it says your clients don't even know who she is because she never worked there." So I told him what evidence I had and he was like, "Let me get back to you." So, they settled the case.
MK: Being sued is a very minor punishment. Are these people then criminally prosecuted?
MB: No. No, because governments worldwide don't look at slavery as a serious issue.
MK: And does that hold for the people who employ them and the people who brought them here?
MB: Yes, I mean there are very few prosecutions, even in the United States, and certainly not in other countries. There are an estimated — and these are very low estimates — an estimated 12.3 to 27 million slaves worldwide. It is a huge problem. There are more slaves today than at any time in history. There are a lot more slaves today than there were during the transatlantic slave trade, when 11 million Africans were taken, brought to the New World …
The reason why there are so many slaves today is that since the 19th century up until the present the population worldwide has tripled … Obviously, there's not enough space or resources for them in their small villages. So you have poor people being pushed into these huge centers where they don't have jobs, and they don't have the safety nets of family and village and community and home. That makes them vulnerable to being exploited and to being sold into slavery …
I think that the key to eradicating slavery is in the power and the hands of governments. Governments have to say this is a big problem … What governments have to do to end slavery is … they have to strengthen their labor frameworks. They have to update their labor laws to not just say slavery is illegal because slavery is illegal everywhere on earth, but to say specifically, ‘These are the things that employers cannot do.'
