New Law Mandates Labor Department Training to Spot Human Trafficking Victims on the Job

This new piece of legislation, the Enhancing Detection of Human Trafficking Act, is straightforward: it mandates that the Department of Labor (DOL) create and implement specialized training for staff to help them spot and report human trafficking cases. Within 180 days of the bill becoming law, the Secretary of Labor must launch this program, focusing particularly on employees in the Wage and Hour Division who work in states with high rates of illegal child labor. The core purpose here is to turn the folks who usually check your paycheck and safety standards into frontline detectors for modern slavery, using the existing federal definition of human trafficking (Sec. 2).

The DOL’s New Job: From Wage Cops to First Responders

Think about the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division—these are the investigators who show up at construction sites, farms, factories, and restaurants to make sure employers are paying minimum wage and following overtime rules. This bill recognizes that these investigators are often the only federal officials who get inside places where labor exploitation, including trafficking, is happening. The new training is designed to equip them with the tools to recognize the signs of trafficking in the workplace, which often hides behind things like wage theft or poor working conditions (Sec. 3).

The training must cover identification techniques—learning how to spot both victims and perpetrators—and, crucially, how to handle the situation once a suspected case is found. This isn’t just about making a phone call; the law requires a clear referral plan to the Department of Justice and other authorities. This plan must follow best practices for victim protection, meaning investigators have to work closely with advocacy groups and local law enforcement to ensure the victim's safety and privacy are prioritized during the referral (Sec. 3).

Accountability by the Numbers

For the busy person, the best part of this bill might be the accountability mechanism baked into Section 4. Starting one year after the program launches, the Secretary of Labor has to send an annual report to Congress. This report isn't just a pat on the back; it has to include specific numbers: how many DOL employees completed the training, and exactly how many human trafficking cases were referred to the Department of Justice or other authorities that year. They also have to explain how they track the response of those agencies to the referrals. This requirement forces transparency and ensures the training program isn't just a one-off event, but a measurable, ongoing effort to fight trafficking where it often occurs: in the workplace.