Most people don't associate the construction industry with human trafficking, but it is happening on a large scale worldwide. In this show, we learn what human trafficking really is and how we can play a role in snuffing it out.

Meg Hughey and Miranda Nehrig from Freedom Network USA are on the front lines of the issue, working to educate owners and employees on how to spot and resolve the issue.

Transcript:

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00:01
Speaker 1
All right, it's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm not saying it works. I wish you God speed. Godspeed with all of that. I think that's really nice. You know, I'm not sure what kind of success you're gonna have with that today because the world, my friend, has changed. Right. A lot of American construction workers, they have different needs.

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00:21
Speaker 2
They have completely different needs.

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00:22
Speaker 3
These awards have a huge, like, criteria that you have to fill out. And they usually have a community service.

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00:29
Speaker 2
Or community, you know, the most productive with a high performance value. And, you know, sometimes it's 11 o' clock at night.

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00:40
Speaker 1
Funny, isn't that? Yeah, not. Not for me.

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00:43
Speaker 2
Not for me.

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00:44
Speaker 1
At 11 o', clock, I am guaranteed to be snoring, so.

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00:48
Speaker 3
So.

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00:57
Speaker 1
It's morning huddle time. Good morning. I'm Chad Prinke. I'm here with Miranda Narig and Meg Huey, our two guests today. Miranda and Meg, thank you so much for joining. How are you two today?

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01:09
Speaker 2
Excellent, excellent. Thank you, Chad.

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01:11
Speaker 4
Doing great.

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01:13
Speaker 1
Yeah. All right. Where are you two in the world? Where are you located? That's always one of my favorite questions to get rolling and just. And then, like, the classic, how's the weather? Where are you, Miranda?

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01:25
Speaker 2
So I am indianapolis, Indiana, and the weather currently is a bit gray and rainy. So I think that's the. The trend as we're entering November.

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01:38
Speaker 1
Indy. So we're on the. You're. You're Eastern time, though, right? In Indy?

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01:41
Speaker 4
Yes.

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01:42
Speaker 2
Although Indiana does that weird thing where, like, part of Indiana and like, in the region is on Central Time, as is like, a very small section of the Southern state. So where I am on Eastern time. But depending on where you're at in the state, it can change a little bit.

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02:00
Speaker 1
Learning new things every day. I didn't realize there was a little part of India. Is it the part right by Chicago that stays on Chicago?

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02:07
Speaker 2
Claimed it, yeah. It's. It's on Central. And then like, the southern tip is just a little bit closer to the Illinois side of life. So they are also on Central Time.

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02:20
Speaker 1
Right on. And Meg, where are you in the world?

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02:22
Speaker 4
I am in Kalamazoo, Michigan, which is also on Eastern time.

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02:26
Speaker 1
No, I thought that was firmly in Central time.

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02:29
Speaker 4
No, I am Eastern time, which is really weird. I am halfway between Detroit and Chicago. Almost exactly. So that's kind of cool. It's really easy to take little, like, weekend trips to either place. And it's also really rainy and gray here. So I turned my heat on today, which I was not Excited to do, but here we are.

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02:49
Speaker 1
Yeah, it's always that. It's like when you admit defeat and winter is showing up and you're like, here we go. Yeah, I know. I fight it. I was in my brother's house this weekend. It was like, 61 degrees, and were gritting our teeth like, we're not doing it. His wife came in and clicked on the heat, and he was like, all right, well, we lost.

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03:08
Speaker 2
We have accepted the loss in this moment.

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03:11
Speaker 1
Yep. We're just not gonna make it. Well, awesome. I see that Stacy has just joined. Stacy, I'm going to bring you on. Is that okay? Right here. There she is.

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03:20
Speaker 3
Good morning, everyone. Good morning.

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03:25
Speaker 1
Stacy. Any exciting stories about why you're a couple minutes behind today?

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03:29
Speaker 3
No, not exciting computer stuff.

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03:33
Speaker 1
Boring stories where I'm angry and I'm behind. Yeah, I know. I know that. I know the drill. Well, welcome, everyone's Halloween. Hello. Oh, my God. My kids. My kids brought home. I think everybody, like, weighed their candy. It was. It was. It was like, three pounds of candy. A child. It was. It's too much candy. We're gonna donate it to, like, kids who need candy. I don't. I think that's the wrong thing. I think we should donate other things. I think from what. From what I understand, though, the school is collecting the candy and sending it to, I think, troops who don't get Halloween. Yeah, right. Because what are you gonna do? They're already kind of in costume. No, I'm joking. That's not true. All right, good. Let's move. Let's move.

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04:17
Speaker 1
So today's topic, we're going to talk about human trafficking, which is something that I didn't think I'd be talking about in relation to the construction industry. If you'd asked me two years ago, I'd have said, huh? But over the past couple of years, I've been learning a lot and getting exposed to some really interesting studies and actually had the opportunity to see Meg present in a. I think, a webinar about a year ago. Meg with the associate. I'm sorry, the American Subcontractors association of Metro. Time.

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04:50
Speaker 4
Makes no sense at this point, Chad. So.

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04:54
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, in the. In the virtual world. But that really opened my eyes to some things. So human trafficking is a thing in the construction industry. It's not only a thing that we all know exists. And when we think about human trafficking, our minds don't naturally. I think, you know, the general population, if you will. Our minds don't naturally go to construction, but it's there. And so what I want to do is invite Miranda and Meg to help us to understand what this is, what it looks like, what we can do about it in, in the day to day for our audience, which is made up of people who work in and who serve the construction industry.

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05:35
Speaker 1
So Stacy, as always, make sure that we get that audience question factor rolled in so that we've got some good stuff to bring to Miranda and Meg here toward the end. But I am going to ask Miranda and Meg to start off by just describing what Freedom Network USA is all about. So whoever wants to take that.

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05:55
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So Freedom Network USA is a national coalition that provides a space for service providers, legal entities, individuals to come together and have a space to share resources and to have an idea or a finger on the pulse of what's happening across the nation when it comes to services for survivors of both sex and labor trafficking. So that's the majority of the organization. And then we do have subsections within our organization. A housing team, there's a general training team, there's a team that focuses on membership. So they help organize all of the organizations and individuals who want to become a part of the coalition. And then there is our survivor reentry project, which is what I coordinate.

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06:53
Speaker 2
So I am a staff attorney with Freedom Network USA and I not only represent my own clients here in the state of Indiana, but I also coordinate cases nationally for survivors who are seeking criminal record relief that is tied to their trafficking experience.

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07:13
Speaker 1
Wow.

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07:14
Speaker 2
Yeah. So some big stuff. Meg, is there anything you want to add in that little.

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07:19
Speaker 4
Oh, you did such a great job. I'll tell you what my role is just context, but so I'm a resource specialist at Freedom Network, which basically means that I help to create all of our webinars and trainings and deliver those trainings and then also help to create a lot of the content see on our website. So we do have a really, I'm really pleased with it. It's a free kind of website, resource hub. So you can go to our website and there's like fact sheets, toolkits, case studies, things like that to just sort of help service professionals like learn more about human trafficking, learn how to work with survivors of human trafficking. So I help create a lot of those sort of behind the scenes materials as well.

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08:04
Speaker 1
Awesome. So, so if I can restate what I think I understand just for confirmation or correction, it would be that you are a network of providers. You're that what Freedom Network USA is all about kind of creating a network across the USA for survivors to tap into all to various types of resources they may need. So you exist for the benefit of the survivors of human trafficking? Yeah. Yep, yep. All right. All right, cool. And it just to give us a little bit of a sense of like, sort of size and scope. Are you in all states? Where are you? And, and what, what's the, you know, I don't know, the footprint look like today?

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08:51
Speaker 2
So we have over 90 members, I want to say, and that includes organizations and individuals. From my understanding, as of right now, we're in most of the continental usa. I can't speak to our territories or to Alaska and Hawaii, but on, at least within the continental usa, we are. We have someone present in about every state.

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09:20
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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09:21
Speaker 2
And I think I answered all the questions.

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09:23
Speaker 1
That's good.

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09:25
Speaker 4
Great.

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09:25
Speaker 2
We did it. Congratulations.

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09:27
Speaker 1
There's that moment where you wonder, like, am I done? Yeah, you?

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09:30
Speaker 3
Yeah.

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09:31
Speaker 2
Did I touch on all of the questions?

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09:35
Speaker 1
It was perfect. No changes. All right, so that's. That, that's really good context for who you are and what you do. What. So, so what is human trafficking? You know, provide that definition for the group and then. Yeah, just in its purest form. And then maybe what we can do is talk about how that specifically manifests in the construction industry.

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10:01
Speaker 4
Yeah. So Miranda, do you want to, since you're an attorney, talk about the legal definition? And then I can kind of talk a little bit more about how that manifests in the trafficking or in the construction industry, not the trafficking industry.

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10:14
Speaker 2
Absolutely. So I will read verbatim the federal law for human trafficking. So federal law defines a severe form of trafficking in persons as. And then there are two definitions. Right. So there's sex trafficking, which is the recruitment, harboring, transportation provision, obtaining, patronizing, or soliciting of a person for the purpose of a commercial sex act, which is induced by force, fraud, or coercion, or in which the person induced to perform such act has not attained 18 years of age. So basically with either. Well, let me finish labor trafficking and then I'll break it down a little bit more. So with labor trafficking, it is again the recruitment, harboring, transportation, provision, or obtaining of a person for labor or services through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt, bondage, or slavery.

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11:14
Speaker 2
So really the elements you need are the force, fraud, or coercion to get a benefit is the simplest breakdown. You, the person who is doing the trafficking has used illicit form in order to make another person serve them in some way, whether it be for labor services or commercial sex act.

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11:37
Speaker 1
Yep. Okay. And so, Meg, bring this home for our audience, which is, as I mentioned, you're right, made up of pretty much just folks in and around the construction industry.

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11:52
Speaker 4
Yeah. So what we're really tending to see in the construction industry is labor trafficking manifesting. So essentially somebody being forced to perform some type of work, in this case, some type of construction work. Oftentimes we're seeing, you know, folks from other countries who may be undocumented, folks who may have been smuggled into the country being forced to do construction work. Sometimes they may not be, you know, getting the. The full wage that they were promised. Sometimes they may be working very dangerous jobs without proper safety equipment or without access to medical care if something happens. Sometimes we've seen folks being kind of forced to live one particular site altogether without the ability to leave. There's just always some type of fraud happening or force happening or coercion happening.

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12:46
Speaker 4
So again, we may see that as something called debt bondage, where somebody believes that they owe some type of debt to the folks that they're working for and they have to work till it's paid off. We sometimes see folks having, you know, their documents taken by the people in charge and telling them they have to work for, you know, their documents to be returned to them. Things like that. Where we're seeing that a lot of the time undocumented folks are being trafficked in the construction industry because it may be easier to employ them because you don't have to jump through all the hoops of legal employment. Employment.

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13:24
Speaker 4
And it also may be easier to exploit them simply because they either do not know their rights in the United States or they are fearful of law enforcement because they don't have that documentation that might protect them in the country. So that's a very quick breakdown of some things we've seen manifesting in the construction industry, but certainly not a full list or breakdown.

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13:47
Speaker 1
Fantastic. I mean, not fantastic, but a really good description. Right. And. And so help me or help our audience to understand. Well, first off, this isn't just in the construction industry. Right. This is in terms of. If we, as we focus on labor trafficking, it's not just in the construction industry. Where else would we see this?

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14:09
Speaker 4
Yeah, so really we can see this anywhere that people are and that jobs exist, essentially. So there is a huge kind of scope of where labor trafficking can happen anywhere from domestic work within someone's house to you know, obviously the construction industry to every industry in between, essentially anywhere that people work and there's the ability to exploit them, we can see labor trafficking happen. I don't know if you want to add anything to that, too, Miranda, of anything you've seen.

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14:40
Speaker 2
Yeah, I was just going to say that, like, some. Some big things to think about are where you might. There's not as much regulation in terms of the labor force, so the restaurant industry, construction, obviously, as we're here, and then the domestic labor side of things, because you can. You need a big workforce.

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15:04
Speaker 4
Right?

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15:04
Speaker 2
Or like the hotel industry, you need a big workforce in order to get things done. And in order to do that, you sometimes use under the table means.

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15:15
Speaker 4
Right.

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15:15
Speaker 2
In order to pay like, or make sure that you're getting access to the laborers. Another would be our. Our farm, our farming industry. Agricultural industries, where again, you need a big workforce and you might. You might need it seasonally or you just. You by any means necessary, you are trying to get the work done and there's very little oversight, which makes it easier to exploit and then take advantage of the folks.

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15:47
Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah, okay, that makes sense. So that it paints a good picture. Unregulated labor force, large numbers of people needed. And, man, I have so many feelings about this topic. And. But one of the things that I really want to make sure that the two of you have the opportunity to talk about to our audience because is. Is that how do we spot it? How do we identify it when it's going on? And. And then ultimately, what do we do about it? But let's. Let's start. Let's start with how do we spot it? What does it look like when it's going on? And I'll. I'll do you the.

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16:32
Speaker 1
Because when were talking about this in preparation, the two of you were like, it's super important that we have a disclaimer on the front side of this that what we don't want to be doing is going and sort of imagining into creation, you know, trafficking. Where trafficking isn't occurring. There's, there's, you know, trafficking is a very specific and narrow definition that we've gone through. And we don't want to go around sort of, you know, as amateur detectives and go creating drama where it doesn't exist. So a lot of people may be voluntarily selecting into, you know, lines of work, types of work, types of living circumstances and things like that just, you know, it ain't our business what they're choosing to do, but there are people who need help. And. And so I don't know if I did your disclaimer for you.

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17:27
Speaker 1
Feel free to build on that disclaimer. But I want to. I want to make sure that we. That we hit that clearly before we start talking about how to. How to identify it, how to spot it.

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17:35
Speaker 2
Can I hop up real quick, Meg?

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17:36
Speaker 4
Sorry.

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17:37
Speaker 1
Here comes the lawyer.

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17:38
Speaker 2
Yeah. No, well, yeah, no, of course. I mean, if my job is. I am who I am, Chad. Okay.

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17:45
Speaker 4
All right.

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17:45
Speaker 2
So, excellent disclaimer. The only things I wanted to just add. Add on in terms of. So when we're being careful about not conflating trafficking with something else. So a big one would be smuggling. These are. They're not the same. Smuggling is a voluntary agreement for someone to be moved across the border illegally. And once the border is crossed, relationship is done. And the person being moved is not necessarily forced to do anything. Smuggling, not trafficking. And I think that there is that misconception that trafficking is taken. Right. And we all are, Liam Neeson, with a certain set of skills, trying to save our daughters. That is. That is not what we're talking about.

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18:34
Speaker 1
Right.

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18:35
Speaker 2
That is, you know, I just. Very important also from, you know, well, from a sex trafficking side of things. You know, sex trafficking is not inherently a commercial sex act between two consenting adults, but under federal law, any person that is under 18 is inherently. Is automatically being trafficked because you. You can. You can't consent to sex before the age of 18.

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19:01
Speaker 1
Yeah. As it relates to sex trafficking, that makes a ton. I could be like, I'm consenting, and they'd be like, you're 17, you can't.

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19:07
Speaker 2
And the only reason I highlight that is because, you know, Freedom Network does do a lot of policy advocacy as well. And we believe in, you know, supporting adults who are making their own consenting choices. And so the conflation of sex work into trafficking automatically is. Is not our game. So that's the only thing I wanted to put on. The disclaimer was wonderful. Excellent work, Meg. Anything?

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19:38
Speaker 4
Yeah, no, I think that's. That was all really great. Chad and Miranda, how do we spot it? Yeah, so there's. There's some things that we've kind of seen across the board happening in a lot of trafficking cases. There's some things that may happen in some cases, some that may not happen in certain cases. We often will see things mimicking a lot of, you know, similar signs to things like sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse as well. So there's many kind of interconnected crimes who all may have sort of similar, you know, red flags, for lack of a better term, that stick out. So, you know, if you spot something like this, it may be worth looking into, even if it doesn't, you know, manifest as trafficking.

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20:26
Speaker 4
But some things that are more specifically, often trafficking related are things like people not having access to their own legal documents, particularly if they are folks who are undocumented. If they have any piece of identification, if that is held from them and they're not able to kind of prove who they are, that's often a sign that something's not right. Because of course you're not going to be able to do anything else if you don't have your identity. Right. We also see oftentimes like if people similar to other crimes that I just mentioned, people having unexplained injuries. So in the context of the construction industry, that may be people having injuries like concussions, foot crushing injuries, broken bones that haven't been treated, things that really should have been prevented by proper safety equipment.

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21:17
Speaker 4
They may not have access to those things either because they are treated as sort of a disposable piece of property, essentially. They may not have access to go to health care because of course, either they don't have insurance or the person or industry trafficking them doesn't want them to go to health care because they don't want to be found out. We also, a huge thing that we often see in labor trafficking in particular, again, is people not getting paid at all. Maybe they're getting paid for far less than they were promised. Maybe they're expecting to do one job when they sign a contract or they agree to do a job and it turns into something totally different from the scope of work that they had planned on doing.

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22:04
Speaker 4
That's something that we also kind of classically see happening in labor trafficking that either confiscation of money or not paying people is really to kind of keep people being trafficked, right? Like if you again, don't have access to your money, don't have access to documents, there's no way that you're going to be able to escape that situation, provide for yourself or your family, do something else, get your own place to live, things like that.

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22:31
Speaker 4
Again, those kind of control tactics are really something that we're seeing often in labor trafficking, as well as fear being instilled in folks, particularly those folks who are immigrant workers or undocumented immigrant workers, being told that the police are going to be called on them if they don't comply with what the trafficker wants or that they're going to be deported or that their family is going to be harmed back in their home country if they do not do what the trafficker wants? Again, you know, American citizens can also be trafficked in the construction industry as well. But again, we more commonly are seeing our undocumented folks and our folks who have other vulnerabilities being our trafficking survivors.

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23:13
Speaker 1
Yep, that's an extremely useful description. And as I, as you describe it, I can picture it. I'm betting that there are people in our audience who are picking, you know, who actually have that picture in their mind right now, maybe have even helped someone like that to navigate a situation like this. So that begs the question, what do we do? What do we do when that happens? When we, when we identify those red flags, what should we do? Especially when we're not in a position to fix it ourselves? Right. Was it that the person doesn't, they're not our employer or our employee. We can't just be like, oh, I'm sorry, I'm going to stop doing that to you. Right. What do you do, you know, if you're just a do gooder, Right. A person who's trying to do good.

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23:57
Speaker 2
So I think that first and foremost is knowing not only like some of the red flags that Meg mentioned, but also an important element here throughout is safety for yourself and safety for these workers who you think might be experiencing this victimization.

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24:16
Speaker 4
Right.

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24:17
Speaker 2
And so that I, my recommendation would be if, you know, if you're able to have a conversation and ask some open ended questions, like if you're getting the sense of, if you see someone who's injured or if you see someone, like if you're seeing a group of laborers being brought to the work site and then being taken away from the work site together, and there's very little freedom in their movement, you can ask some open end questions about, you know, how their day to day is going, how you know what their experience is and you know, what their expectation of the job was versus what they're doing on the site. And that can give you some ideas about what their experience is. I think another important element here is to know your rights as the employee and their rights.

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25:13
Speaker 4
Right.

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25:13
Speaker 2
So I'm not saying you have to memorize every single legal remedy, every single right, but having a basic understanding of your rights as an employee or an independent contractor laborer on a site allows you to know what the rights of those around you are and you can communicate those rights to your fellow laborers. Because we all should know what our rights are as the people who are working on the job site and if you know the local legal services that are available to you. So indiana, for example, we have a legal services agency called Indiana Legal Services and they have a specific subsection that focuses on connecting with non citizen immigrant workers and making sure that they know their rights.

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26:05
Speaker 2
And if they feel their rights have been violated, they have the contact information for the legal services so that they can see what remedies are available to them. And so if you have an idea or if you are seeing a group of folks who you think are being trafficked or exploited, you can provide that information to them in a safe manner and allow them to make those decisions for themselves. Because I'm sorry, I'm just going to.

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26:36
Speaker 1
Say on a big commercial job site, right, there's opportunities here so the general contractor can posters, they can put up, you know, information, you know, and with numbers and resources and specific people, potentially even on the job site that you can go and talk to if this type of thing is happening. I could also see the general contractor being in a position to put on a, you know, a, every three months put on a 30 minute quick seminar on the job site where all the, everybody who gets, you know, on the job site can go and sit there and you know, you might see some people's eyes in the audience saying, you know, this is me. I really, I could use help. I've been in this situation. So, so I think these are some really tangible steps that we could be taking.

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27:34
Speaker 1
And I think what I'm hearing both of you say is it's all about empowering these people. It's about empowering survivors with information and resources. But maybe stopping short of like overstepping and you know, taking control of the situation oneself. You know, we kind of have to provide people with the resources but not, I don't know, pull them out of those situations, if that makes sense, if that.

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27:59
Speaker 1
And I, I'm just putting, it's a delicate situation because we're talking about humans with agency and you know, they have decisions about how they want to handle things and even if they are being trafficked, they may not want you to handle, you may be putting them in danger, you know, you may not want to handle it, you know, drop in as Liam Neeson, so to speak, and start, you know, sorting things out, you know, that may be the wrong thing for their family.

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28:29
Speaker 2
You know, at it as A community is that it's. It's not our inherently our duty to save. It is our duty to empower one another, and we empower each other with not only education, but with that provision of available resources for folks to make informed decisions.

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28:47
Speaker 1
Yeah, that's. That's extremely. It's helpful for me to bear in mind as I. Because I totally am like a fixer and I would. I would definitely overstep without that in mind. So that's. That's very useful. Okay. Stacy, questions?

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29:03
Speaker 3
Yeah, you're talking about all these resources. Maybe, like seminars, toolbox talks. Where can we find these resources?

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29:11
Speaker 2
So. Oh, I'm sorry, Meg, you are the reason. You are the resource expert. I was gonna. My. My first step would be. So obviously, you know, we're. We're in different parts of the country, knowing what legal, like, legal services are available in the specific region and connecting with someone in that office to ask if they have these of trainings, I think is a first step. Meg might know more.

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29:39
Speaker 4
That's fine. And I think that's true, like, depending on your area. It's also really helpful to connect with folks in your area who are doing the work, just so that it can be very specific to you. But we do also have on our website, freedomnetworkusa.org we have a list of our members, so you can see kind of who across the country is a member of freedomnetworkusa.org and that may be a really useful way to like, come up with who is in your community that you can reach out to. Also, we do have a bunch of free trainings, fact sheets, toolkits, things like that. Right. On our website, as well as direct contact to us and all of our colleagues who may be able to also, like, point you in the correct direction.

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30:23
Speaker 4
We're also able to do kind of tailored trainings, depending on your needs and on your wants and, you know, the specific things that you are seeing as well. So you can also feel free to reach out to us, and we can either provide those things for you or connect you to the folks who may be the best fit for you and what you're looking for.

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30:43
Speaker 3
Great, thank you. And then I guess just a last question is how do we prevent this from happening, you know, from the start? I know it's a tough one.

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30:55
Speaker 2
It is a tough one. And Chad, in our discussion yesterday, that. That was, you know, one of the questions, right, of how do we. How do we prevent and stop trafficking? And people ask me this a lot as an attorney who works in this area. And my answer is always the same and isn't inherently one that is satisfying because it's paying, it's really participating in community in a way that eliminates these vulnerabilities.

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31:25
Speaker 4
Right.

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31:26
Speaker 2
So believing and advocating for policy changes that change how non citizen workers are provided the documents and safety they're needed to stay here and work and not be vulnerable to exploitation is a big one. Right. Specifically in labor trafficking and the basic necessities of housing, food and health care, those are the things that people need and are exploited the most for folks who are trafficked. And so I know it's the desire to perhaps volunteer and have that immediate gratification of connecting with someone who's experiencing this is like what we want, but really it's addressing those vulnerabilities as a whole, as a system that will eliminate the vulnerabilities that lead to trafficking on every level.

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32:34
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah, I think so. We are in, we have a black market for labor in this country.

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32:44
Speaker 4
Absolutely.

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32:45
Speaker 1
And, and it's born of combination of supply and demand where we have a need clearly for this labor force. And, and there's a desire of this labor force to leave their home countries and to come here to service that need. And unfortunately we have an immigration system that is not workable when it comes to adequately meeting the demand for and adequately meeting the needs and the desires of the people who are looking to leave their home countries and come here. And so anytime there is a black market, anytime there's a black market, other crime will thrive. I see this all the time when I turn on that, like, you know, for me, find me where crime is happening and I will show you where other layers of crime are happening.

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33:52
Speaker 1
And, and the fact is that if you are an employer that, you know, is already breaking the law by, you know, employing tons of illegal. Right. Undocumented people. Right. Tons of. If that's already against the law, the line between breaking the next law and the next law law, it's flimsy and certainly not all of these employers are that way. But, but enough are. And, and so at the end of the day, you can be angry all you want about people pouring over the borders, right? You could be angry about our loose borders and people getting like you could, that can upset you. But you know what? Inhumanity is never okay. I don't care, you know, at the end. So, so either pack them up, ship them back or start treating Them like humans, because they are only one of those two things is okay.

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34:52
Speaker 1
And, and I think if we packed them up and shipped them back, our entire economy would collapse because we clearly have a desperate need for these people. So what we really need to do, I think when you ask that question, Stacy, we really need to do is we need to make. We need. We need to make massive overhauls where immigration policies that, that eliminate black markets for labor and acknowledge. Possible to have a black acknowledge that.

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35:17
Speaker 2
We'Re inherently dependent on the workforce. Like, I mean, I think that's the reality. And for, I guess a more tangible result also would be education, educating yourself and those around you about, again, those remedies and your rights, because these.

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35:36
Speaker 4
Are rights that are.

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35:36
Speaker 1
Are.

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35:39
Speaker 2
Available to all of us as laborers. Right. And so new to empower others. And, and like Chad's saying, it's just really acknowledging the basic humanity of everyone around you.

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35:52
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.

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35:54
Speaker 3
Can we get Kaylee's question real quick? Because I think it's a good one. She was just asking is there any reporting processes or, you know, if there's a way to anonymously report? You know, when you see this kind of thing, where do you. How. How does that work?

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36:10
Speaker 2
There is the National Trafficking Hotline. That is typically where. Where I would direct folks. Okay, were you going to say something? No, that's.

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36:21
Speaker 4
That's exactly what I would say. Basically, you know, we would not recommend as Freedom Network, like doing direct reports necessarily to law enforcement or like that, only because that could really endanger people who may already be in dangerous situations, particularly if they are undocumented or they have another vulnerability there. So, absolutely, I would say you can feel free to report that to the National Human Trafficking Hotline as just a way for people to know that something's going on. Just as a side note, with the Human Trafficking Hotline, those are just reported cases, not substantiated cases, that are necessarily things that have actually been found to be trafficking. So whenever you view, like, stats on human trafficking, like, keep that in mind, those are just things that people think they've seen but have not necessarily come to fruition or have.

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37:19
Speaker 4
Have not necessarily actually been trafficking, just may have had some of the signs or symptoms of it. But reporting there's a really great start because it lets folks know that there's something going on in a particular area. I would also identify, like, within your workplace, if there's somebody in a position of authority who feels like there's someone trustworthy that you can talk to, I would not out the specific person that you think may be trafficked or experiencing vulnerabilities, again, because that may be dangerous for them, but just if there is somebody that you feel is a safe person for you to share, that you think that something might be going on your work site or workplace, that may also be another way for someone else to also kind of examine the culture and what's going on in your workplace.

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38:07
Speaker 1
Okay, great.

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38:08
Speaker 3
Thank you.

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38:10
Speaker 1
Miranda, Meg, thank you so much for coming on and helping us through this topic. I know this is, you know, something that, as I started off saying, it's probably not front and center on people's minds in the construction industry on a daily basis. Particular, particularly our viewers, not really thinking about it on a daily basis. But hopefully as you hit the job site this afternoon, you know, later on this morning and this afternoon, you start to take a look around, you'll have a different set of eyes on and, you know, you'll play a role in, you know, empowering people to help themselves out of these types of situations. So thank you both. Any parting words? Miranda, Matt.

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38:54
Speaker 2
I mean, just thank you very much for the opportunity to be here and talk on, to speak on this topic. I think it's really important and you know, as I've said, I'll say it again, education is really key to most of this and this is where we start, right? With these, with this dialogue, with this conversation.

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39:13
Speaker 1
So thank you.

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39:14
Speaker 4
I just want to echo that. Thank you so much for having us today. Thanks for giving us this opportunity to talk to folks. And I would say if anyone who's attended today learned something, share that with the people that you work with. Just like Miranda said, I think education is the way to shift perspectives and also kind of move the anti trafficking movement itself along. So please share that information with folks. The, the best way for people to know that they have rights and to know that you know, something is wrong is to talk about it. So please feel free to share anything you learn today with those that you work with or those at home too.

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39:52
Speaker 1
Hear, hear. Thank you. See you both. Appreciate it. Come back soon. Take care. All right, Stacy, let's talk about next week. You know, man, that's such an interesting topic. I gotta tell you. That one get, that one gets to me. There's something. So many of the people that are in the workforce were smuggled. So many of the people are smuggled, owe money to somebody.

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40:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, we're really not talking a lot about that topic like Just the past year it's been popping up so.

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40:23
Speaker 1
Well, it's popping up because of the wage theft laws and how things are starting to finally impact the larger companies that are upstream, that are responsible for hiring all the, you know, I mean, where it's really funneling from isn't the brand name general contractor, the brand name subcontractor that, you know, specialty contractor that, you know, where it's coming from is from the under, you know, the shadow labor brokers that, you know, are basically, you know, feeding the, you know, fueling the workforce. But, but maybe not always doing so in a humane way. So not only from a wage theft standpoint, but from just the way you're treating people standpoint. It gets me. Sorry, this one bothers me. So what we're talking about next week, we've got Jerry McCaughey who's coming on to talk about running an off site construction company.

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41:26
Speaker 1
So Jerry is, he's been running off site construction companies for decades and doing so mostly in Europe, came over to the United States, I don't know, something like 20 years ago or 15 years ago, started his own business here doing the same thing. That's really become a norm over there. And, and what I love about it is that we're going to be talking about, you know, things that we have hit on before like prefab and off site and you know, all that. But, but we're going to be talking about it really through the eyes and experience of somebody who does it all the time and not just somebody who is an evangelist for it, but somebody who's like, this is how you have to be set up to do it. These are the things that you need, these are the things that you don't.

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42:10
Speaker 1
These are the expenses that you're going to have. And this is how I've had success running my business. Jerry's going to be a really interesting conversation, so I look forward to that. Stacy, do we have a Steel Toe Communications marketing tip of the week?

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42:23
Speaker 3
We don't have a marketing tip of the week, but I did want to make announcement that I've had a lot of people recently reach out to me indicating they just needed help setting up or optimizing their LinkedIn profiles. So I will be hosting a seminar this spring and I don't have the date yet, but I'm hoping March. So just if you're interested in that or you need A one one. Just send me an email and I can, you know, look over what you have in, give you some advice on how to amp things up and you know, make sure you're more visible on LinkedIn.

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43:00
Speaker 1
I love it. I. Yet another thing I may take you up on, Stacy. So it's just. I appreciate you, I really do. I think that's, I think that's great. So as always, please email Stacy direct to be added to our weekly mailing list. You can obviously just direct message either one of us and we'll make that happen. But, but just know that if you send it to me, I'll be sending it to Stacy because she's the one who puts together our newsletter. Our newsletter comes out once a week. It's really specific. I think it's very useful. Every time I see it, I think, you know, this is, it's like anti spam. It's very good. And, and so, you know, thank you, Stacy, for keeping that running. And please do folks jump in on that.

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43:42
Speaker 1
We have just the month of November until the end of this season. So that means we've got four episodes left. Each one is going to be a blast. Please join us through the end of November. But also if you know anybody that should be talking to us in this forum and sharing what they're doing to create positive change in the building industry, please pass their information along for our next season. Stacy, anything else before we jump?

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44:07
Speaker 3
No. Have a great rest of your week and I'll see you next Tuesday.

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44:11
Speaker 4
Bye.

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44:11
Speaker 1
See you next Tuesday.

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