SESSION NO. 4: Components Necessary to Reduce Demand for Labor Trafficking

Carol Brooke, Senior Attorney, Justice Center

Carol Brooke joined the Justice Center in September 2000 as a staff attorney with the Immigrants Legal Assistance Project. Now a Senior Attorney with the Workers’ Rights Project, Carol represents farmworkers, H-2B workers, and other low wage workers, with a particular focus on class action litigation. Carol’s litigation and advocacy efforts focus on minimum wage and overtime violations, other forms of wage theft, occupational safety and health, violations of agricultural worker protections, worker misclassification, and non-compete agreements.

Carol graduated from the University of North Carolina School of Law, and received a Masters of Public Health degree from the University of Michigan. Before attending law school, Carol worked as a public health educator with a non-profit organization that provided education and advocacy for low-income poultry processing workers in North Carolina.

Christine Long, Executive Director, N.C. Human Trafficking Commission

Christine Shaw Long, MSW has been passionately working towards social justice and serving others for over 20 years. In her current role as Executive Director for the NC Human Trafficking Commission, she strives to improve statewide response and collaboration to identify and respond to human trafficking. Previously, Christine was with The Salvation Army of Wake County for more than fifteen years. During that time as their Director of Social Ministries, she oversaw program operations at the Wake County Center of Hope.

The programs included a 90-bed shelter for women with children experiencing homelessness; the award-winning Project CATCH - Community Action Targeting Children who are Homeless; and a number of crisis assistance programs open to the community. In 2011, Christine opened Project FIGHT – Freeing Individuals Gripped by Human Trafficking. Since then, Project FIGHT has responded to hundreds of referrals across North Carolina and is located in six cities. Christine served four years on the NC Human Trafficking Commission and on The Salvation Army’s North American Anti-Human Trafficking Council. In 2017, she was presented with the National Salvation Army’s Excellence in Social Work award. She received her Bachelors and Master of Social Work degrees from East Carolina University. Christine is an approved Consultant with the National Human Trafficking Training and Technical Assistance Center.

Trent Taylor, farmworker advocate and attorney

Trent Taylor is a proud farmworker advocate and attorney and specializes in wage and hour, employment, and environmental litigation of cases affecting farmworkers. Mr. Taylor received his Juris Doctorate from George Washington University Law School in 2010.

Prior to focusing his career exclusively on the representation of farmworkers, Mr. Taylor spent ten years representing unions and practicing wage and hour law. He has represented labor unions and their members in arbitrations, negotiations, and federal court litigation. From 2011 to 2013, Mr. Taylor served as the Employment Law Attorney at the Kentucky Equal Justice Center where he specialized in representing low-income workers, including farmworkers, in multiple-plaintiff wage and hour actions. While at Kentucky Equal Justice Center, Trent helped co-draft the Kentucky Trafficking Victims Rights Protection Act. From 2013 to 2019 he worked as an associate attorney for Barkan Meizlish, LLP, where he represented employees in individual and class-action wage and hour litigation. He also represented unions in their contract negotiations, contract administration, and arbitration of grievances. Mr. Taylor also co-authored the Ohio AFL-CIO’s Law of Organizing, a handbook designed for union organizers. He has served as moderator and presenter for the National Employment Lawyers’ Association 2018 Conference, the AFL-CIO’s 2019 Labor Coordinating Committee (LCC) Conference, and the 2021 and 2022 National Farmworker Law Conferences.

During his past three years of employment, Trent has continued his litigation work on behalf of farmworkers and farmworker organizations by assisting these clients in litigation under the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), the Migrant and Seasonal Agricultural Worker Protection Act (AWPA), the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) as well as other constitutional law claims whereby he has challenged the exclusion of farmworkers from various labor protections.