v 11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labour. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centres for the king.
The story now moves on several generations: while once it was just Joseph held as a slave, now the entire Israelite population was forced into slavery. And I notice the description of their taskmasters – brutal slave drivers … hoping to wear them down with crushing labour.
It doesn’t seem all that different from the ‘Work Camps’ set up by the Nazis in 1930’s Europe. Or camps set up on farms in parts of the UK to provide agricultural labour during harvest times. Or sweatshop clothing factories in the Midlands; or ….. The object now is not to crush these modern slaves, but to employ them for a pittance in order to maximise business profits. Nor do politics or racial discrimination enter the equation – it is money and profit that drives the modern slavery culture.
Some large commercial businesses in the UK are trying to check on the nature of employment terms in other countries in order to say that their organisations are ‘ethical’, but every now and again some example of ‘modern slavery’ turns up to embarrass them. Pray today for Social Workers and the Police as they try to uncover the rotten side of business practice in the UK, and bring proper human working relationships to the fore.
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