What Is Forced Labour

Forced labour is work a person is made to do under the threat of a penalty and which they never freely agreed to. The definition comes from the ILO Forced Labour Convention, 1930 (No. 29), which Australia ratified in the early 1930s. It is one of the practices that sits inside modern slavery rather than another word for it.

The Convention breaks it into three elements. The work can be in any sector, formal or informal. The menace of a penalty covers a wide range of pressures used to make someone keep working. Involuntariness means free and informed consent to take the job and the freedom to leave at any time. That last part is why false promises from an employer or a recruiter can place someone in forced labour even though they accepted the role willingly. The Convention also carves out five situations, among them compulsory military service, normal civic obligations and court ordered work supervised by a public authority.

Australian law puts it more tightly. Under section 270.6 of the Criminal Code, forced labour is the condition of a person who, because of coercion, threat or deception, would not consider themselves free to stop providing the work, or free to leave the place where they provide it. Servitude, in section 270.4, repeats that wording and adds that the person is significantly deprived of personal freedom. Forced labour does not require that extra element, and that distinction is the one most often got wrong.

Two things follow for an Australian business. Consent at hiring does not settle the question, because what matters is whether the person is free to leave now. And most forced labour is not imposed by the state. The ILO’s 2021 global estimates attribute 86% of cases to private actors, which places it inside ordinary commercial supply chains. Clear recruitment records and written terms the worker actually receives will not stop coercion on their own, but without them a business cannot show how someone came to be working for it.

This is general information rather than legal advice, and anything resembling forced labour warrants specialist advice quickly. The ILO’s guidance on forced labour sets out the international definition in full. For workplace training, see Sentrient’s modern slavery course and the wider compliance training courses.