Doping scandals have tarnished the image of the Tour de France in recent years. But new research also shows that cyclists may be riding to victory on bikes built by workers under debt bondage or forced labor. According to Le Monde diplomatique, research over the past year focused on the two world bike manufacturing hubs, Malaysia and Taiwan. This research uncovered disturbing accounts of working conditions and hiring practices at some of the biggest players in the global bicycle industry.

Massive loans lead to modern slavery

 Over the last century, due to a steep rise in production costs, bike industries in the U.S. and Europe dried up and Taiwan and Malaysia emerged as the new manufacturing hubs. Taiwan-based Giant is now the world’s biggest bike manufacturer and dominates the medium-to-high-end global market. Japanese company Shimano, located in Malaysia, has emerged as the world’s biggest bike components manufacturer. For both companies, migrant workers from poorer neighboring countries like Vietnam, Thailand, and Nepal are an integral part of why bike manufacturing in these locations has become so profitable. But employees working in the plants told interviewers they paid as much as $5,700 to home-country recruiters for jobs at Giant in Taiwan or Shimano suppliers in Malaysia.

Father Peter Nguyen van Hung, a Catholic priest in Taiwan and staunch defender of migrant workers said:

“when Vietnamese migrants arrive, they have no freedom due to their debt from paying recruiters for jobs. Brokers and employers control them; they are in bondage and can’t get out,”

Those thousands of dollars of exorbitant recruitment fees that migrants must pay to secure a job usually represent over a year’s wages in their home country. That means that almost all of them start work with large high-interest debt that can take seven months to a year to pay off. Under those conditions, migrant workers cannot afford to lose their job as defaulting on the loan could mean they lose their family home or face crushing poverty or even violence when they return. That leads to workers accepting exploitative conditions they otherwise wouldn’t. In other words, they fall into debt bondage and possibly modern slavery.

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