Bangladeshi Garments, Indian Thread, Yarn and Tea Added to Forced Labor List
The Department of Labor's annual report on forced labor and child labor describes a global problem, from garments in Bangladesh, Brazil, Vietnam and Malaysia to tea and thread in India to gold from Venezuela, in addition to the sectors already associated with withhold release orders.
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There are 32 additions from last year's report, including garments from Bangladesh and tea and yarn and thread in India. Ten were added because the agency's International Labor Affairs Bureau believes they have inputs "produced with child labor or forced labor."
Researchers also added Chinese photovoltaic ingots, photovoltaic wafers, solar cells, and solar modules to the list, as they said all are made with polysilicon from Xinjiang.
Cotton from Uzbekistan was removed from the list, as it no longer uses forced labor in its harvest.
Thea Lee, deputy undersecretary for international affairs, wrote, "We are drawing attention to critical supply chains in clean energy -- highlighting China’s use of forced labor in polysilicon production (a key input in solar panels) and the use of child labor in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the mining of cobalt (an input in lithium-ion batteries)."
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., responded to the report's release Sept. 28: “Today’s report is another stunning reminder of the pervasive nature of forced labor in the global economy, and a call to action. Putting an end to these egregious abuses and ridding our supply chains of forced labor requires work across many stakeholders, and I commend the Department of Labor for diving deeper than ever before. This look at how entrenched forced labor is in the production of so many of our goods increases transparency, which ultimately, will strengthen our enforcement measures. House Democrats continue to push labor standards higher and higher, and we look forward to working with the Biden Administration to use every available to tool to stop these atrocities.”