Building Dignity:

The Campaign to End Labor Trafficking

in South Dakota’s Construction Industry

While many of us are familiar with sex trafficking, far fewer of us understand labor

trafficking–what it is, how frequently it occurs, how to identify it, and what we can all do to end it.

Labor trafficking is the harboring or recruiting of people for labor or services under force, fraud,

or coercion for the purpose of involuntary servitude, debt bondage or peonage. Through our

investigations in partnership with law enforcement, Naomi Project has uncovered two distinct

variants of labor trafficking within the Sioux Falls construction industry.

In the debt bondage variant of labor trafficking, construction workers are indebted to the

smuggler who brought them into the U.S. and are forced to pay off their debt at exorbitant

interest and under brutal threats. For example, workers might be paying their smuggler

hundreds of dollars a week solely in interest under the threat that if they do not make these

weekly payments, their family members in their home country will be killed. In the employer-as-

trafficker variant of labor trafficking, construction workers are housed, transported, exploited,

and threatened directly by their employer. Through Naomi Project’s outreach to construction

workers at a construction company engaging this model of human trafficking, we learned of a

tragic rollover accident involving a company vehicle that the driver initially refused to drive

because it was so poorly maintained. Three workers needlessly died that day.

This inhumane abuse must stop. To this end, Naomi Project has begun a campaign called

“Building Dignity,” to equip construction companies to be part of the solution to end labor

trafficking. In this partnership, construction companies invite the Naomi Project team to train

their staff to identify the indicators of the different variants of labor trafficking to then reach out to

Naomi Project if they become aware of these indicators. Naomi Project will then follow up on

these leads, reach out to law enforcement with relevant information and offer support services

to those identified as survivors of human trafficking. In recognition of this partnership, Naomi

Project will present participating construction companies with a certificate celebrating their

commitment to being part of the solution to ending trafficking within the construction industry.

Labor trafficking thrives when communities fail to recognize its existence. It is a horrific crime

that depends on untrained eyes and ears in order to masquerade as legitimate business. By

training more and more people to identify and report labor trafficking, we as a community will

more readily identify people experiencing labor trafficking, which is crucial to then move forward

effective investigations that hold accountable those responsible.

We all want to see justice be done. Any one of us can be the person who stops by the side of

the road and attends to the person who was victimized. In order to be that person, we need to

be equipped to recognize the many forms of victimization. Join us to end labor trafficking today.

Want to learn more about becoming part of the solution? Please reach out to our Building Dignity campaign lead Jordan Bruxvoort: director@projectofnaomi.org.