Today in North America the use of forced labour is obviously limited, but it still occurs all around the world, particularly in Asian countries. IKEA, the Swedish furniture company, just admitted on Friday however that they benefitted from forced prison labour in Eastern Germany over two decades ago. This brings up an interesting point–how do we know where the labour force is truly coming from? Supposedly the prison workers who manufactured the goods for IKEA suffer from psychological and physical scars, and the head of IKEA Germany stated that they will continue looking into an investigation to compensate them.

This really brings attention to North Americans and Europeans that even companies that are so insulated in our society have also committed horrid acts with people like ourselves. But, if this were an article about child labour in Thailand or Malaysia, would anyone blink? Probably not. On a domestic scale we can assume that anything committed back in the 70s’ will be figured out and most likely investigated. But, this also shows on an international level we should be wary of other labour forces and their policies when it comes to manufacturing outside our Western countries.