What Is Modern Slavery In The Workplace

Modern slavery in the workplace is serious exploitation happening to people working in or for your organisation, rather than somewhere offshore in a supplier’s factory. It covers forced labour, servitude, debt bondage, human trafficking and forced marriage, and in Australia it most often reaches a business through labour hire, contractors and on-site service providers.

Most Australian coverage treats modern slavery as a supply chain question, which is where the statutory reporting duty points. The workplace question is narrower and more uncomfortable. It asks whether the cleaners who come through at night, the guard on the gate or the crew supplied by a labour hire firm are working under conditions anyone in your business has actually looked at. People in those roles are often on your premises without being on your payroll, which is how exploitation stays invisible to the organisation benefiting from it.

The second half of the question is what happens to the person. Employers hesitate because they assume identifying someone forces them into a police process. That is no longer the only route. Since July 2024 the Support for Trafficked People Program, administered by the Department of Social Services and delivered by the Australian Red Cross, has run an Additional Referral Pathway allowing victim-survivors to get support without engaging law enforcement, delivered by The Salvation Army until 30 June 2027. Its intensive stream provides 90 days of support regardless of whether the person assists an investigation. Details sit on the Department of Social Services programme page.

Start with the people most likely to notice. Supervisors who sign off timesheets, site managers, and anyone working alongside contract crews. Staff who work alone or out of hours are harder to check on and easier to exploit, which is part of why cleaning and security recur in Australian cases. If someone is identified, their health and wellbeing comes before any internal process. This is general information rather than legal advice, and obligations differ by state and territory and change over time.

More posts sit under the modern slavery category, and Sentrient’s modern slavery course covers what to look for and how to escalate.