Can The Federal Anti-Trafficking Statute Solve a Global Problem?
My previous post introducing the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (“TVPRA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 1581 et seq., argued that the statue can be a powerful tool for obtaining civil redress for workers because of its generous statute of limitations, lack of limit on damages, and the broad scope of actionable conduct and potential defendants. I concluded that this scope likely even extends to prohibited conduct that occurs outside the United States—which is the topic of this post.
Forced labor is a global phenomenon. In 2022, the International Labour Organization estimated that 27.6 million people that year were victims of forced labor, with more than half of those victims located in Asia and the Pacific, followed by Europe and Central Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Arab States. Forced labor is most common in the service, manufacturing, construction, and agricultural sectors. While some of these forced labor victims produce crops or goods for domestic consumption, many of these products are exported to the United States.
Labor rights advocates have long struggled to hold U.S. companies accountable for exploitation overseas, but with limited success. While the Alien Tort Statute (ATS) ostensibly grants U.S. courts jurisdiction over foreign nationals’ tort claims...
New York Packaging II LLC, operating as Redi-Bag USA, and its CEO Jeffrey Rabiea have agreed to pay $7.3 million to resolve False Claims Act allegations brought by the U.S. Department of Justice a...