Data shows year by year the planet is getting hotter and hotter. Alongside the uptick in temperatures is the steady increase of labor exploitation as corporations put profits over protections and force workers into ever more dangerous conditions. Denise Brennan, Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Faculty Co-Director of the Gender+ Justice Initiative at Georgetown University, believes that a new template for anti-trafficking efforts is needed. One that combines worker safety with mandated reductions in fossil fuel use. By taking steps to stop rising temperatures, we can also stop also the increase and normalization of labor exploitation.  

Treating workers as “expendable assets” 

From agriculture to construction to food service, extreme heat and other climate change caused harms are changing the face of human trafficking. As part of her research, Brennan recently spoke with laborers working on the front lines of climate change. She particularly focused on places with recent flooding or fires. What workers told her was that, while the jobs being done were essential to sustaining life, they were being treated as easily replaced.  

For Open Democracy, Brennan writes: 

This new era needs more than just new kinds of labor protections. Entire sectors of the economy need to be restructured before they become even more lethal. Treating workers as expendable assets is as grotesque as it is economic folly.

Workers have been found doing their jobs in the midst of a haze of toxic wildfire smoke, in active evacuation zones, and knee deep in contaminated flood waters. According to Brennan, the extreme criminalization of irregular migration has created a pool of workers with few job opportunities. Basically left with only dangerous, dirty, and dehumanizing work options, many have little choice but to accept. And sadly, their corporate employers know it. 

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